Just behind the Som distillery in Madhya Pradesh's Raisen district are the Krishna Industry's brick kilns. On the morning of December 26, 1996, a Down To Earth (DTE) reporter and photographer accompanied by two activists of the Kesariya Brigade (a local organisation), Akshay Kumar Sharma and Uma Shankar Vaid, visited the site. After scouting the area behind the distillery premises (at the brick-kiln site), they came onto the main road, and stopped by the evaporation lagoons. Chief minister Digvijay Singh had ordered the closure of the distillery on December 12, 1996. But the sludge in the lagoons looked suspiciously fresh, and not two weeks' old.

Tek Chand, overseer at the kilns and Ajudhi Lal, who supervises the workers, maintained that the distillery had been working every day despite the closure orders. "There is smoke coming out of the chimney every day,' they say. As if to confirm their statement, the said smokestack belches an extra plume of black soot.

"The closure orders had been explicit,' says A N Tiwari, Raisen's collector. "The distillers are allowed to bottle (the alcohol which is already distilled) and despatch it. But our teams that had visited the factory reported that the unit was closed, and only the work allowed has been in progress.' Tiwari passes the factory on his way to work (the factory is on the Raisen-Bhopal highway). Amazingly, he has not seen smoke rising out of the smokestack, even though his staff, travelling with him, have noted it. "When I crossed by the factory during the day, my windows were up,' he explains.

The distillery is situated at Sehatganj, so called because the region's pure water had an invigorating effect on people's health and used to be carted even to Bhopal. Today, the same water has turned into a black, evil-looking and foul-smelling liquid. The well just beside the Tidiyapul ka nallah (which joins the Jogi Khar nallah a few hundred yards from the well) is lined with a black deposit. The colony of brick-kiln workers (there are around 250-300 of them) gets its water supplies from a tubewell. "This water is also dark in colour, and often stinks,' says Munna, a worker. The lure of employment keeps these workers at the kiln site. They ignore the small niceties of life such as pure water, and get on with the more important business of living.

Even as the DTE team and the two activists were standing outside the distillery premises on public land, contemplating the factory, a person claiming to be a security supervisor at the distillery tried to wrest the reporter's camera out of his hands, directing a torrent of invectives at them. He was joined by at least four other colleagues, who then forced the little group into their jeep.

They were taken into the distillery premises, where they met two men, who claimed to be G D Arora, manager, and O P Singh, general manager of Som distillery. Having offered their