Cartons of liquor bottles hidden under shrouds at crematoriums to pass them off as bodies.
Booze bottles stashed away in underground chambers at government-owned farmhouses.
The liquor mafia in Bihar have come up with ingenious ways to get around prohibition in the state at a time chief minister Nitish Kumar has embarked on a “samaj sudhaar yatra” (social reform tour) across the state to take stock of the effectiveness of the ban on liquor and inform people about the adverse effects of alcohol consumption.
Acting on a tip-off in Muzaffarpur district, personnel from Maniyari police station visited a cremation ground in the area to check the veracity of the claim that liquor bottles had been stored there.
A team led by Maniyari station house officer (SHO) Ajay Paswan did not find anything amiss at first glance. A closer look, however, made them suspicious as there were an unusual number of what appeared to be bodies covered with shrouds.
A search led to the seizure of 72 cartons containing around 640 litres of Indian-made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) worth around Rs 10 lakh, kept in cartons under the shrouds.
“We were surprised that such a large quantity of IMFL was hidden at the cremation ground. But then it is also a place that people normally avoid visiting. We are now examining whether the seized liquor is genuine or fake,” Paswan said.
Residents loot liquor from the vehicle. Sanjay Choudhary
There have been umpteen cases of liquor bottles and packs being hidden in ponds, streams, rivers, canals, agriculture fields, houses, schools and deserted buildings in dry Bihar. They have been transported in trucks, containers, oil tankers, milk cans, empty cooking gas cylinders and special chambers built in vehicles.
However, rarely had a cremation ground been used to stash away liquor. Only two such cases have been detected in Bihar since Nitish banned liquor manufacturing, trade, storage and consumption in April 2016. Earlier, illicit alcoholic beverages had been seized from a cremation ground at Barh in Patna district a few months ago.
Earlier this week, the police raided a farm belonging to the state agriculture department at Tarapur in Munger district on the basis of intelligence inputs about the presence of liquor there.
Sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) Pankaj Kumar led the team that noticed two underground chambers with steel lids at the agriculture farm. They yielded 368 bottles of IMFL. The chambers are usually used to make compost and at times to store grains too.
“No one would have thought that illicit liquor would be hidden in underground chambers on a government property. However, our crackdown on liquor trade and consumption is yielding positive results,” Kumar told reporters on Monday.
On Tuesday, a vehicle involved in an accident in Gopalganj district was found to have been ferrying IMFL. The speeding SUV had hit a cyclist at a market under Uchkagaon police station and screeched to a halt. As people surrounded it, the driver jumped out and escaped.
The people were surprised to find IMFL bottles inside the SUV. In no time, many had made away with the bottles. A video shot by someone in the crowd and circulated widely on social media helped the police arrest eight persons on the charge of looting liquor.
“This is a sad situation. People of Gopalganj indulged in looting illicit liquor despite knowing about the prohibition and the strict punishments for flouting it. I was dumbstruck on noticing the glee with which they were doing so. I realised that the liquor ban in the state is not going to succeed,” a senior prohibition, excise and registration department official told The Telegraph on the condition of anonymity.
Various enforcement agencies have in raids across Bihar seized around 65,000 litres of IMFL and country liquor between December 13 and 20. Around 830 people were arrested and 176 vehicles, including 11 trucks and 24 four-wheelers, were seized during the week.