Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Police bust spurious liquor racket

Staff Reporter

Five arrested; car seized

Coimbatore : In a three-day operation, the prohibition enforcement wing (PEW) police personnel from Coimbatore Rural District busted a major spurious liquor racket.

Following information about smuggling and marketing of spurious liquor sourced from Karnataka, the Superintendent of Police, Coimbatore Rural District, A.T. Duraikumar ordered a crackdown.

A team of officers led by Additional Superintendent of Police, N.M. Mayilvahanan, and Deputy Superintendent of Police, Subbiah Pillai, on Tuesday intercepted two persons, Kumar from Sivaganga and an ex-serviceman Thangaraj, working as security guards with a bank in Sulur and recovered 45 bottles of liquor from them.

On Wednesday, the team intercepted a car on the bypass road and recovered 342 bottles of spurious liquor from Sekar alias Chandrasekhar, Selva alias Selvakumar and Ajmal Basha.

Ajmal Basha is wanted in a case in Kerala dating back to nearly 10 years and was said to be the brain behind the entire spurious liquor racket in Coimbatore.

Based on their confessions, the police raided a house at Kovaipudur used as a storehouse for spurious liquor sourced from Karnataka. It is learnt that the gang used to source the liquor with fake brand labels, excise labels from Karnataka and clandestinely market the same at and around Coimbatore.

The raid led to the seizure of 1,500 excise labels, 800 bottle lids and close to 250 labels of leading and sought after reputed brands of liquor.

The seizure also included nearly 250 empty used bottles meant for re-filling them with spurious liquor.

The police have registered cases against the five persons under the provisions of Tamil Nadu Prohibition Act, 420 (Cheating), 468 (forgery) and 471 (for using a forged material as genuine one).

The police have also seized a car and two-wheeler used by the gangsters.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Focus on anti-Naxal drive, says IG
Wanted: roads safe to walk
Police focus on local body polls, anti-Naxal drive
Overflow at Siruvani Dam again
Restructure distance learning courses: VC
`Improve distance learning courses'
Cancer screening
Police bust spurious liquor racket
Security tightened in city for local body elections
Career fair at university
Hunt launched for couple
Around the City
In Coimbatore Today

Copyright © 2006, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu