Acting on a tip-off, officials of state excise department seized Indian-made foreign liquor worth over Rs 1.5 lakh from a car at Pardih Chowk on NH-33 under Mango police station area in Jamshedpur, the police said on Tuesday morning.

The police said the consignment was being smuggled to Jamshedpur from Arunachal Pradesh by two city-based youths, who have also been arrested. The accused were identified as Santosh Singh alias Bablu and Pawan Kumar Srivastava. Both are the residents of Bagbera locality.

The consignment consists of 25 cartons of a particular liquor brand. Assistant commissioner, Jharkhand excise, Arun Kumar Mishra said they got information about a gang who were smuggling high-end liquor from Arunachal Pradesh.

While talking to The Telegraph Online, Mishra said, “After getting the information, we have deployed a team at Pardih Chowk on the NH-33 at 1 am on Tuesday. We have even intercepted each and every vehicle that was passing through the same route. At around 2 am, we have stopped a car in which Bablu and Srivastava were travelling. During a check, we have recovered the liquor cartons.”

According to the assistant commissioner, they have recovered as many as five cartons in which there were 225 liquor bottles. He informed that there is a label on each bottle which says, “To be sold in Arunachal Pradesh only”.

Mishra said both the accused were sent to jail after producing them before the judicial magistrate by 10 am. The police are now interrogating the accused to get more information about their gang which is active in Arunachal Pradesh.

“We will continue the interrogation to find out the actual source from where they get the consignments and those who are also purchasing them," said Mishra.

Excise department sources said Singh is a liquor mafia who also owned a liquor shop. But since a couple of years, he had been running this illegal business.