SIT exposes evasion of ₹35 cr excise duty by country liquor factory

LUCKNOW While investigating anomalies in the supply chain of country made liquor, the Uttar Pradesh police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) exposed evasion of excise duty worth ₹35 crore by a Saharanpur -based country-made liquor factory in just 11 months between April 2020 and February 2021, said senior SIT officials here on Tuesday

LUCKNOW While investigating anomalies in the supply chain of country made liquor, the Uttar Pradesh police’s Special Investigation Team (SIT) exposed evasion of excise duty worth ₹35 crore by a Saharanpur -based country-made liquor factory in just 11 months between April 2020 and February 2021, said senior SIT officials here on Tuesday.

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The officials said the factory owner and officials evaded excise duty by allowing two trucks laden with country-made liquor on one gate pass and receipt. They said the SIT had charge-sheeted nine people, including the authorities of the factory, in connection with the two FIRs lodged in March earlier this year. They said the investigation about the involvement of at least seven more people, including the factory’s managing director Pranay Aneja, vice president Virendra Shankdhar, HR head Som Shekhar and sales head Ashwani Upadhyaya was still on.

The officials suspected that it could be just the tip of the iceberg. The SIT detected such a large amount of excise duty evasion in just 11 months from one factory, as the records older than this period were not made available and it could not be ruled out that this practice had going on before this period too. It could also not be ruled out that similar practice of tax evasion was prevalent in other country-made liquor manufacturing units in the state, an official said.

Superintendent of police (SP) of SIT, Dev Ranjan Verma said those charge-sheeted included eight people who were arrested at the time of search conducted by the local authorities at the factory on March 4, 2021, on the complaint of major anomalies while one person was arrested later by the SIT. He said the investigation was handed over to the SIT on March 6 this year.

He said the accused charge-sheeted were the factory’s unit head Govind Rao, bottling in-charge Hari Shankar Tewari, ETP operator Mange Ram Tyagi, assistant manager quality control Sanjay Sharma, chemist Arvind Kumar, barcode dispatcher Pradeep Kumar, transporter Jai Bhagwan, truck driver Gulsher and attendant Ashok Kumar.

Another senior SIT official said the SIT investigation revealed that the factory authorities used to prepare duplicate bar code and QR code slips and used one gate pass and receipt for allowing two liquor-laden trucks from the factory.

He said the excise department had fixes some time limit for the transporters for transportation of liquor consignment from the factory to the licensed godown meant for it in different districts. He stated that the transporter was allowed 24 hours’ time for transportation of liquor consignment to the godown within 300 kilometres, 48 hours for 500 km and four days for 1000 km.

“In connivance with the factory authorities, the transporter used to make two trips in the same time period and deliver extra liquor consignments to the godown and the godown authorities used to sell it in the market with help of their preferred license shop owners,” he said, adding, “The first trip was not registered at the factory while the second trip was registered.” He explained the first trip was registered at the factory only when they were afraid of getting caught by the government authorities.

He said one truck contained 1500 cartoons of liquor bottles and one cartoon contained 45 bottles. He said the investigation revealed that factory authorities allowed supply of at least 99 trucks causing loss of ₹35 crore to the state exchequer.