Delhi: Bootlegger straps 100 alcohol bottles inside jacket, arrested

New Delhi: An alleged bootlegger, who taped 100 bottles of illicit liquor to the inside of his jacket, and another who hid 18 cartons below a pile of garbage on

New Delhi: An alleged bootlegger, who taped 100 bottles of illicit liquor to the inside of his jacket, and another who hid 18 cartons below a pile of garbage on a cart to smuggle them from Haryana to outer Delhi, were caught within hours of each other on Tuesday after police found the clothes of the first one to be “odd” and the presence of the second to be “suspicious”.

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The first suspect was identified as 20-year-old Ishu, who was caught from outer Delhi’s Mundka Tuesday afternoon after a police personnel noticed him wearing a heavy jacket despite the sweltering heat, said A Koan, deputy commissioner of police (outer).

Another investigator, on condition of anonymity, said that not only was his choice of dressing odd for the weather, his torso also looked unusually fat for a man with a lean face.

“A policeman who noticed these odd signs stopped him for a casual checking. When he asked him to take off his inside jacket, he was found to be wearing another half-sleeved jacket inside that resembled a bullet-proof vest,” said the investigator mentioned above.

The inner jacket was found to have a total of 100 quarter bottles of illicit liquor stuck using tape, added the investigator.

Ishu allegedly turned out to be a bootlegger who would make five such trips from Haryana to Delhi to smuggle in country made liquor using this modus operandi. “Since the checking of the vehicles along the border has been strict in the recent past, Ishu was using the bylanes on the border to bring in the liquor,” said the officer.

The other suspect was caught in the evening in the jurisdiction of the same police station. The DCP identified him as Jagmohan Shakya, also allegedly a regular bootlegger.

“He had placed 18 cartons of illicit liquor bottles under a pile of garbage on a cart and was riding it into Delhi. A policeman noticed him and found it suspicious that he was plying the garbage cart in the evening when garbage collection is usually done in the morning in that neighborhood,” said the investigator quoted above.

When questioned casually by the policeman, Shakya said he belonged to Nihal Vihar. “It was surprising that a man from Nihal Vihar was picking garbage at the far away Tigri Border,” the officer said, adding that it was around that time that the policeman noticed some cartons below the garbage.

Both the men have been arrested and the sources of the recovered illicit liquor are being probed.