Illicit liquor business rampant in Patna, four other districts

PATNA: Five districts, including Patna, have emerged as hotspots for illicit liquor smuggling in the state. Of them, Muzaffarpur, Vaishali, Saran and Gopalganj have recorded the highest seizure of liquor in 2020.
According to the official data, officials of the state prohibition and excise department recovered a little over one crore litres of liquor between January and December last year.Altogether 615 people were arrested in 7,111 raids.
In December alone, 95,534 litres of liquor — 52,621 litres of Indian-made foreign liquor and 42,913 litres of country liquor — were recovered during the operation launched by the task force set up by the excise department.
Muzaffarpur topped the list with recovery of 8,39,047 litres of liquor. Vaishali stood second with recovery of 7,38,771 litres, followed by Saran (7,10,635 litres), Gopalganj (6,85,905 litres) and Patna (6,47,541 litres), respectively.
Among the four rail zones, around 1.17 lakh litres were seized from area falling under Jamalpur rail zone, 83,327 litres from Patna rail zone, 40,467 litres from Muzaffarpur rail zone and 20,565 litres from Katihar rail zone, respectively.
Joint commissioner of excise department Krishna Paswan said the task force comprising the officials of the police and the excise department have been assigned to carry out raids to check smuggling of alcohol.
“Our focus is now on major suppliers operating in the state. Raids are now conducted on specific intelligence inputs,” he said.
The department has already initiated the process to set up 15 additional check posts at the state’s borders with Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Nepal. Earlier’s there were 15 check posts on the borders to undertake checking of vehicles entering the state’s limit.