Southern States - Tamil Nadu   

Spirit smuggling racket busted

By S. Dorairaj

CUDDALORE OCT. 1. With the arrest of two persons and seizure of 20,000 litres of rectified spirit and the impounding of an oil-tanker used for illegal transportation of the consignment from Andhra Pradesh last evening, police sources say further investigation of the racket could throw more light on the spirit smuggling operation in the State.

Police personnel of the prohibition enforcement wing and special teams, intercepted the tanker near the SIPCOT area on the Cuddalore-Chidambaram road. Though a meagre quantity of crude oil was found in its chambers, the major portion of the tanker contained the illegal consignment concealed in secret chambers, the sources said here today.

The operation has also brought to light the ``ever changing strategy'' of the kingpins involved in the smuggling racket. The secret chambers, filled with rectified spirit, were so designed that they could be unearthed by the police only with difficulty. This betrayed the ``novel and innovative'' methods adopted by the spirit smugglers to dupe the police, the sources said.

The very fact that the illegal consignment had been brought from Andhra pradesh also showed that the ``tight vigil'' kept up by the State police, particularly in the wake of liquor deaths, through periodical inspection of industries using spirit for manufacturing goods, had thwarted attempts to syphon off rectified spirit from industrial units for illegal purposes, the sources claimed. Persons involved in the illegal trade had to run to the neighbouring States to procure spirit by producing ``fake documents.''

They also admitted that smuggling of huge quantity of spirit, that too from other States and diverting it for manufacturing illicit liquor was not at all possible in the absence of a strong network. The operators of the network had taken adequate care to see that their whereabouts and involvement in the racket were not exposed. Even persons used at various levels in the illegal operation, had been instructed not to exceed their brief as evidenced by the confessions made by the two arrested drivers of the oil tanker — V. Ravi of Chathirapatti in Virudhunagar district and Athikesavan of Mehboob Nagar in Vellore district. Both of them had reportedly told the police that they were merely asked to take the loaded vehicle from Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh and return to their respective places after leaving it at Narimanam in Nagapattinam district. The operation had led to a loss of around Rs.40 lakhs for the operators of the illicit liquor network, besides preventing the consignment from getting converted into 1,20,000 litres of illicit liquor, the sources claimed.

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