Jamshedpur, Feb 20: The Excise department will continue their extensive drive in the district to stop illegal sale of liquor. “We have intensified search operations and joint raids along with police, forest and revenue departments across the district,” said an official. In the latest raid, the Jharkhand Excise department’s Jamshedpur office unearthed a mini-factor of ‘foreign’ liquor under Kowali police station area.
During the raid, the Excise officials seized 40 cartons of finished Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) bottles beside large quantities of liquor-manufacturing materials from the mini-factory. But unfortunately, the raiding team could not nab anyone as the liquor manufacturer-cum-seller managed to escape getting to know about the imminent raid.
An official of Jharkhand Excise, Jamshedpur said that they had an intelligence input that some people were engaged in manufacturing IMFL at a house in Dipasai village and selling the liquor in the suburb area since the past few months.
“Acting on the information, the department started to detect the place where the illicit IMFL was being made. Having gathered information about the mini-liquor factory, a team of Jharkhand Excise raided a house in the village and unearthed the liquor factory at about 8 am today,” he said.
He pointed out that the finished liquor that the raiding team succeeded to unearth was of various popular brands and was estimated to be that of Rs 1.75 lakhs. During the raid a large number of liquor bottles of various popular brands were seized, but also a large number of empty bottles, sealing machines were seized.
The Excise Department of the East Singhbhum district has also formed Quick Response Team (QRT) of respective police stations to nail down illegal liquor joints flourishing in different parts of the city. As part of the initiative joint surprise raids would be carried out at liquor selling points in the evening while production points will see raids in the morning.
The Excise commissioner pointed out in the event of a surprise inspection of the stock, the liquor shop-owners will not take the risk of getting nabbed selling duplicate liquor, because the inspection teams have been instructed to check the batch number of the liquor bottles being sold at the counter.
Notably, the steel city has a history of manufacturing of duplicate liquor as the district police had in the past busted several rackets of duplicate liquor manufacturing units, especially from the localities like Bagbera, Jugsalai and Kadma. Knowledgeable sources maintain that the racketeers of duplicate liquors use to do the rebottling of the brand which has the maximum demands, and when the liquor shop owners do a brisk business on such occasions, they tend to sell the duplicate stuff.
