Chandigarh: On Sunday, police in Mahendragarh, Haryana, found 870 cartons of liquor in a truck in the district. The liquor bore stamps that said “for sale in UT Chandigarh only” and, according to a police official, was being smuggled in a truck that had a licence to transport bicycle accessories.
Its destination — the dry state of Gujarat.
The contraband was eventually impounded and the truck driver arrested, the police official told ThePrint, asking not to be named. It came just over a month after 1,023 cartons of illegal booze bound for Gujarat from Chandigarh was seized. This reveals a larger problem — liquor being smuggled out of both Haryana and now the union territory of Chandigarh into states such as Gujarat and Bihar, where there’s a complete ban on its sale, possession, and consumption.
In this regard, a report by a Special Investigation Team led by Additional Director General of Police (Narcotics) Shrikant Jadhav in February 2021 is telling. The SIT, set up on 8 November 2020 to investigate deaths caused in Haryana by hooch consumption, noted in its report that liquor smuggling to Bihar could have cost the state exchequer at least Rs 100 crore in 11 months between January and November that year.
The report also makes another startling revelation — that the trade is controlled by people with grave criminal charges and connections to “powerful people”.
ThePrint has a copy of the SIT report.
The liquor smuggling in the state has also caused political storms — in December, the Indian National Lok Dal’s lone Member of Legislative Assembly Abhay Singh Chautala sparred with his nephew Dushyant Chautala, Haryana’s deputy chief minister, after 10 lakh boxes of country liquor worth nearly Rs 100 crore were allegedly went missing from godowns in Sonipat.
Dushyant holds the excise and taxation portfolio in the Khattar government.
We take a look at the problem of liquor smuggling from Haryana and what the February 2021 SIT report says.
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The problem of smuggling
In its 270-page February 2021 report, the SIT said that of the 21,59,901 litres (2,39,987 cartons) of IMFL impounded in Bihar from January to November 2020, 9,40,057 litres (1,04,450 cartons) were smuggled out of Haryana — 43.52 per cent of the total recovery of illicit IMFL in that state.
However, the report also said that based on the general trends of confiscation, this seized liquor is only 5 -10 per cent of the total quantity smuggled.
“Assuming the confiscations to be 10 per cent of the total smuggled liquor, if one extrapolates the data of Bihar alone, the revenue loss comes out to be Rs 107.8 crore,” the report said.
In addition, Haryana-made liquor also found its way to Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Gujarat in huge quantities — according to the report, between January and November 2020, 7,10,150 bottles (59,179 cartons) of alcohol smuggled in from Haryana were seized in Delhi and 1,14,670 litres (79,650 cartons) in UP.
As for Gujarat, although the SIT doesn’t quantify the smuggling in terms of revenue loss to the exchequer, the report says Haryana-made liquor made up 70 per cent to 80 per cent of the total confiscation in the state.
The report quotes the additional director general of police (state monitoring cell), Gujarat, as saying that transporters use fake GST bills and RTO number plates while smuggling in contraband.
“On computing the quantity mentioned in the letter it comes to be 73,131 bottles of IMFL which make 6,094.25 cases. It is pertinent to mention that the data represented in the letter is merely a tip of an iceberg as it relates to only cases whose details are present at the State Monitoring Cell of Gujarat Police, entire data collected from all districts of Gujarat will be received soon,” the SIT report said. “After the availability of complete data, the revenue loss caused to the Haryana state exchequer owing to the illegal smuggling of liquor from Haryana to Gujarat state will turn out to be a humongous amount,” the report said.
Indeed, news headlines give some idea of the extent of the problem. Last December, Sonipat police seized 30 buckets of cement primer filled with illicit Indian-made foreign liquor (IMFL), which was being smuggled to Bihar using two fake tax invoices. The police found more than 300 bottles of the IMFL packed in the cement primer buckets.
The same month, Uttar Pradesh Police told the media that its special task force (STF) was working with police departments from other states to arrest Haryana-based operatives and had even conducted raids.
In Bihar, a state that’s been dealing with a spate of deaths from hooch consumption, Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav claimed that most of the liquor coming into Bihar was being smuggled from Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
In December, the growing problem kicked up a political storm in Haryana, especially among the Chautala clan. After the liquor shortfall in the state caused a major row in the assembly, INLD chief Abhay Chautala accused his deputy chief minister nephew Dushyant of patronising smugglers in the state but the latter has strongly denied the allegation.
Rioting, murder, dacoity: What SIT found about those involved in the trade
In its February 2021 report, the SIT also made some observations about the people involved in the state’s liquor trade — the chief among them being the criminal charges against them.
“Criminals charged with murder, dacoity, burglary, attempt to murder, rioting and forgery etc, apart from cases under the Excise Act against them are running liquor trade in Haryana,” the SIT report said.
In Chapter 5 of the report, the SIT lists out details of the First Information Reports against people involved in the state’s liquor trade — not only vendors and sub-vendors but also what it calls “frontmen”.
“The information received from various SPs is disturbing and is a matter of concern, says the report.
The SIT also speaks of police patronage — the report says call records of many of those in the trade show they keep in touch with the local policemen in their area.
“During the course of [the] investigation, through information sought from the field units and through personal interviews of police and excise officials, the SIT came across facts and figures which establish how, over the years, this regulated business has become a playing field for criminals having connections with powerful people. Ordinary contractors cannot compete with them in any manner because of their reputation in the field of crime,” the report says, recommending that the Haryana government should constitute an autonomous body to regulate retail vends and sub-vends.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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