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A woman in a sari disguised with a scarf over her face sits in a dark room next to a large pot brewing alcohol over a fire.

Two men stand amongst dense, high foliage in a forest. One is in camouflage holding a gun.
The terrain police trek through to find bootleg breweries is dense and unforgiving.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

A police officer crouches in a forest next to a blue drum filled with brewing alcohol. It looks like chickpeas in liquid.
Station House Officer Sanjeet Kumar inspects a barrel of fermenting country liquor.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

A hand holds an axe stirring through a mixture that looks like chickpeas in liquid in a big blue drum.
The brew is a mix of mahua flowers, unrefined cane sugar and chemicals.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

Big plastic bags filled with unknown contents sit in holes buried in the ground in a forest.
Bags of fermenting country liquor sit in the ground.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

A group of men pour out a big blue drum of liquid onto the ground in a forest.
Sanjeet Kumar's team destroy the liquor.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

Police set fire to a pile of instruments used to brew alcohol in a forest.
Police set fire to the brewing apparatus to prevent more liquor being made.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

A map highlighting Bihar state in India.

Two men sit in a police station. One man begs to be let go.
These men face weeks, if not months, in jail for smuggling booze into Bihar.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)
A man is breathalysed by police standing on the side of the road.
Police breathalyse people on the Bihar-Jharkhand border.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

A police officer shines a torch in the back of a car, searching it. Male passengers watch anxiously.
The Jharkhand border checkpoint is one of 82 stop-and-search checkpoints around the state.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)
Surveillance screens.
From the bureau in Patna, the government runs a mass 24/7 surveillance operation.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

Baby Kumari.
Baby Kumari, 32, actively campaigned for the ban in 2015.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)
Women in front of a house.
Many women in Bihar voted in support of prohibition as a solution to high rates of domestic violence.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

A person washes clothes in a river.
Bihar, home to 130 million people, is India's poorest state.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)
Men drinking in the dark.
These Bihari men told the ABC the "choice should be ours" to drink, not the government's.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

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A man sells liquor in Nepal.
This bottle shop stands just a few hundred metres from where people can walk into Nepal from Bihar.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)
Men pouring drinks.
Young men drink in a field. Their alcohol was smuggled in from a neighbouring state on a train.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)
Marathon runners stand in front of a blue billboard with anti-drinking, anti-smoking and anti-drugs symbols.
Signs promoting the alcohol ban were prominent at the 2024 Patna marathon.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)
A Bihar hotel displays what looks like beers.On closer inspection, they're non-alcoholic.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)
A billboard of Nitish Kumar.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar brought in total prohibition in 2016.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)
Two billboards with a man's face and words in Hindi stand by a roadside at sunset.
Billboards with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's face are prominent around Bihar's capital, Patna.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

A woman with a still.
A woman in Bihar making 'country liquor'.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

A man in a mask.
A man puts wood on a fire under a still.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds )

A still.
Alcohol being made at home in India.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

Lalita Devi.
Lalita Devi's husband went blind, then later died, from methanol-laced liquor.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

Bihar's capital Patna sits on the holy Ganga River.(Foreign Correspondent: Ellie Grounds)

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