On the front page of The Fiji Times on Monday, March 4, 1980, it read Holi joy lands eight in hospital.
The article was about eight Nausori men who were recovering at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital after accidently drinking a deadly weedkiller during the Holi festival celebrations.
The men drank a mixture of rum and Paraquat, a poisonous chemical used for killing weeds, at a Naselai home outside Nausori.
The article reported the men turned up with a group of Holi celebrants to sing chautal (ballads). All eight were reported to be out of danger and recovering satisfactorily.
They were Brij Kishore Singh, 25, Badri Nath, Rajendra Prasad, 25, Vidya Prakash, 23, Pradeep Singh, 20, and Ram Kirpal, 45.
The men were all from Visama and Naselai.
They were members of the Naselai Ramayan and Bhajan Faag Mandali and were among a group of 40 men going from house to house singing ballads, splashing water and paint on one another, eating, drinking and making merry in the traditional Holi manner.
They told this newspaper from their hospital beds they had already consumed liquor at other houses before arriving at the house of Brij Kishore Singh, where the alleged incident happened.
They said after singing, eating and splashing water and paint, some of the members of the group asked for liquor.
Mr Singh asked his mother Bir Mati to bring some rum which he kept in the house. However, she could not find the rum until the group had moved to neighbour Rup Narayan.
She went to the men and gave the group of what appeared to be rum.
About 10 members of the group took turns to sipping drink.
Two of them, who were sober and had not been drinking, spat the drink out because they noticed the bitter taste immediately.
The other eight drank the weedicide and felt a burning sensation down to the stomach. The men started vomiting and rolling on the ground.
They were rushed to the hospital where they were admitted.
The other two were treated and sent home. Upon investigations, the police found that Mrs Mati had apparently mixed half a bottle of rum with half a bottle of Paraquat.
When her son Brij Kishore Singh had asked for the liquor, she went to the place indicated by him and found two bottles.
One had rum in it and the other contained paraquat. She told the police she was uneducated and could not differentiate between the two liquids.
Relatives of the eight crowded the corridor when a team from this newspaper visited the hospital.
They were heard as saying the men should not have been drinking during the Holi celebrations.
Hindus usually neither ate meat nor drank liquor on religious occasions.
Then divisional police commander Eastern, Superintendent Ambika Prasad, said police had not finished with their investigations relating to the incident.
Police public relations officer at the time, Inspector Mohammed Shameem, repeated police warnings that poisons and other dangerous liquids should not be kept in bottles meant for beverages.
Two women had died earlier at Nausori after drinking paraquat which they believed to be a soft drink.
Other tragedies had also occurred when people, especially children, had drunk poisonous liquids kept in soft drink bottles, said Inspector Shameem.
