Smugglers are now trying to bring in liquor to dry Bihar in boxes with names of popular e-commerce companies written on them.

A state police team conducting a routine check in Mohania in Kaimur district had a first hand experience of the new modus operandi on Wednesday night when they stopped a truck carrying “Amazon” boxes.

“On a closer look, our officials noticed that the boxes were of Amazon but the duct tape used to fasten them bore the name of “Flipkart”, another e-commerce company. It was enough to make them suspicious. They opened the boxes and found cartons of IMFL (Indian Made Foreign Liquor) kept in them,” Mohania sub-divisional police officer (SDPO) Faiz Ahmad Khan told The Telegraph on Thursday.

Mohania is located on the Bihar–Uttar Pradesh border and falls on the trade route connected to Grand Trunk Road, also known as National Highway-2.

A further search yielded 263 cartons containing around 2,367 litres of IMFL.

The driver of the vehicle has been identified as Sandeep Daila from Jhunjhunu district in Rajasthan.

“The driver had brought the consignment from Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh. He has been arrested and forwarded to jail. We are establishing his backward links to track the people involved in smuggling liquor,” Khan said.

The SDPO said the liquor mafia had changed their modus operandi. They do not inform the drivers about the destination beforehand. The address is given only after the vehicles cross the border check posts.

Another police officer involved in the seizure said efforts were being made to find out how the culprits got hold of so many “Amazon” boxes.

The seizure came just a few hours after chief minister Nitish Kumar brought back additional chief secretary K.K. Pathak to the prohibition and excise department in the aftermath of back-to-back hooch tragedies across the state this month in which around 50 people lost their lives.

Pathak is known as a no-nonsense officer and was instrumental in drafting the prohibition law, which has often been criticised as “draconian”.

The IAS officer was shunted out in 2018 after he moved against a couple of leaders belonging to Nitish’s Janata Dal United in Nalanda district for allegedly flouting the liquor ban.

Although Nitish implemented total prohibition on April 5, 2016, the availability of liquor never stopped in the state.