In a joint operation, the Punjab excise department and Mohali police on Wednesday busted an organised module involved in smuggling extra neutral alcohol (ENA) into the state and arrested two men.
The accused have been identified as Ansar and Ikrammudin Khan, both hailing from Madhya Pradesh, and 25,000 litres of ENA was recovered from them.
Naresh Dubey, joint excise commissioner, Punjab, said that on the intervening night of December 28 and 29, they intercepted a tanker carrying the ENA at Lalru, near Punjab-Haryana interstate border. The driver, Ansar, and his accomplice, Ikrammudin, produced some documents in support of the consignment. The authorities immediately contacted the authorities concerned to verify the documents and found that they were fake.
The illegal consignment was meant to be supplied to a bottling plant in Chandigarh, whose liquor brands have been confiscated in heavy quantities in Punjab.Dubey said that this consignment could be used to produce 1.1 lakh bottles of illicit liquor. As per Ansar’s statement, the ENA had been loaded from Chhatisgarh.
An FIR has been lodged under Sections 420 and 120B of Indian Penal Code at Lalru police station, in which the owners of a transportation company and Chandigarh-based distillery, whose names are yet to be verified, have also been named .
{{/usCountry}}An FIR has been lodged under Sections 420 and 120B of Indian Penal Code at Lalru police station, in which the owners of a transportation company and Chandigarh-based distillery, whose names are yet to be verified, have also been named .
{{/usCountry}}Rajat Agarwal, excise commissioner, Punjab, reiterated that ahead of the upcoming assembly polls in Punjab, the department has stepped up vigil in all districts of the state. He added that under Operation Red Rose, between May 17, 2020 and December 11, 2021, 19,784 FIRs have been registered, in which 19,689 people have been arrested.