Gujarat Police used USB drives to share the first chargesheet in the Bhavnagar hooch tragedy investigation because it exceeded one lakh pages. The chargesheet was filed on 5 November in a Bhavnagar court against 42 arrested accused, including a police constable.

The filing came just 14 days before the 90-day deadline for filing the chargesheet. The size of the document forced the police to turn to technology to share it.

Why USB drives

A chargesheet of more than one lakh pages cannot be shared on paper in the usual way. The police used USB drives to give copies to the court and the other parties, because the volume of paper would have been unmanageable.

The use of USB drives is a sign of how large the investigation has become. The chargesheet covers the deaths, the injuries, the accused and the evidence collected by the police.

The tragedy

The case concerns 13 deaths and more than 60 injuries between 14 and 23 August, after consumption of tainted alcohol containing 38.59 percent methanol. The deaths and injuries happened over ten days in August, as people drank the spurious liquor.

Methanol is a poison when consumed, and the tainted alcohol contained 38.59 percent of it. The high methanol content is what made the liquor deadly.

42 accused, 10 absconding

The chargesheet names 42 arrested accused, including a police constable. At least 10 other accused are still absconding, and the police are looking for them.

The presence of a police constable among the accused is a serious part of the case. It suggests that the illegal liquor trade had links inside the police, and that the investigation had to deal with that.

The 90-day deadline

The chargesheet was filed just 14 days before the 90-day deadline. The deadline is the limit within which the police must file a chargesheet after arresting the accused, or the accused can seek bail.

Filing 14 days early shows that the police completed a large investigation in time. The one lakh pages of the chargesheet reflect the scale of the evidence gathered.

What happens next

The court will now take up the chargesheet, and the trial will proceed against the 42 accused. The absconding accused will be pursued separately, and the police will try to bring them before the court.

The case will also look at how the tainted alcohol was made and sold, and who was responsible for the deaths and injuries in August.