Acting on a tip off, a team of Jharkhand Excise officials raided a mini factory at Carriage Colony in Burmamines and seized Indian-made foreign liquor (IMFL) worth over Rs 7 lakh on Monday.
During the raid, the Excise team arrested two persons who were engaged in filling cheap quality IMFL into the bottles having brands of higher prices for selling the rebottled liquor into the market of rural areas in Jharkhand, Odisha and even in Bihar.
The two arrested persons were workers, but the main racketeer whose name the department did not reveal, managed to escape. Beside the racketeer, half-a-dozen other workers also managed to escape at the sight of the approaching raiding party.
Revealing about the breakthrough, Excise sub-inspector J Kujur said that they seized a total of 144 cartons of IMFL from the place where the liquor was being rebottled into the brand of higher price.
He pointed out they have seized the liquor of three brands, King's Gold, McDowell's No.1 and Imperial Blue. He said, “Of the total cartons of seized liquor, 122 are of King's Gold, 22 Imperial Blue and two cartons of McDowell's No 1.”
"The cheap quality IMFL, King's Gold whiskey was being filled into the bottles of McDowell's No.1 and Imperial Blue, keeping a marginally higher price so as to befool the gullible customers in the rural areas of Jharkhand, Odisha and even Bihar. It was like a mini-factory. For the rebottling work, they had managed to arrange stickers, corks, empty bottles and sealing machines. The rebottling work was going on at a large scale," said Kujur while talking to The Telegraph Online.
He said the work of rebottling was going on in a thatched house inside the Carriage Colony so that no one could suspect such illegal activity there.
Kujur pointed out while the price of a 750 ml bottle of King's Gold in the market is Rs 370, the prices of McDowell's No 1 and Imperial Blue of the same quantity is Rs 760 and Rs 780 respectively.
The Excise sub-inspector stated on being interrogated the two arrested persons, identified as Budheswar Nath and Budheswar Kalindi, revealed that the work of rebottling had started since the past one month and also the rebottled liquor were being despatched for sell in the rural areas in the state and two neighbouring state. He also said though the seized whiskey appeared to be original, but still they will get its sample examined in a lab at Ranchi.
