Five held for 'smuggling' liquor in Jharkhand

Medininagar (Jharkhand), Sep 28 (PTI) In a crackdown on bootleggers, police seized liquor worth more than Rs 15 lakh and arrested five people for allegedly smuggling alcoholic beverage in Jharkhand’s Palamu district, a senior officer said on Sunday.

Acting on a tip-off, a police team raided an area under the Hussainabad PS limits on Saturday night, and recovered 314 bottles of Haryana-made liquor, he said.

"We have information that smugglers had loaded liquor into two vehicles in the area, and accordingly, we have conducted a search operation there. We have arrested five smugglers," Hussainabad PS Station House Officer Sonu Kumar Chaudhary said.

During interrogation, the accused admitted that for the past six months, they had been procuring liquor from Faridabad in Haryana and supplying consignments illegally to Bidchu Singh alias Ajay Kumar in Bihar’s capital Patna, he said.

Bihar is a dry state where the Nitish Kumar government had, in April 2016, banned the sale and consumption of liquor, citing the rising number of cases of domestic violence.

"We have seized two vehicles, seven mobile phones and other items from their possession. An FIR has been lodged at Hussainabad Police Station, and all the accused have been sent to judicial custody," the officer added. PTI CORR RPS RPS BDC