Himachal hooch tragedy: Kingpin among 5 held, illegal factory busted
Shimla: Five men –three of them Himachalis and one each from Jammu and Delhi and an illegal distillery plant at Hamirpur ran a well organised racket of illicit trade in Himachal Pradesh, endangering lives of hundreds of consumers of country liquor.
The racket, which Himachal Pradesh Director General of Police Sanjay Kundu claimed has been finally smashed, has left seven persons dead and half a dozen still ailing and hospitalised at Sundernagar in Mandi district.
What was really surprising that the illegal factory which was dealing with manufacture and supply of illicit country liquor had flourished during the Covid period only at the time when the BJP government had promised to eradicate the state's drug and liquor mafia, which had its roots in the earlier Congress regime.
A Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up by the DGP Sanjay Kundu successfully nabbed the kingpin –Narender alias Kalu, who had supplied the spurious liquor consignment to another liquor trader Goru, who hailed from Kangra district.
The network of the liquor traders had its connections in Delhi, Haryana and Jammu, apart from UP. The business was being run from VRV food at Hamirpur at a factory –named 'Rainbow Café', operating in a building of a political leader.
"It was believed, the deaths were caused by either improper mixing of the ingredients, or because a part of the spirit procured for the production of liquor may be impure and contain methyl alcohol instead of ethyl alcohol," said DGP.
He, however, refused to comment if the racket had political patronage adding "it's upto the media to investigate."
Kundu said the SIT had worked on professional lines and smashed the racket within 72 hours even as he had to expand the SIT inducting two SPs, an additional SP and a DSP to probe various angles.
The police raided different places in different districts, collected evidence and seized a large amount of incriminating material.
During the questioning, Kalu revealed that the main supplier of this illicit liquor consignment was one Gaurav Manhas alias Goru of Palampur. A police team traced his location and apprehended him from a hotel in Zirakpur on Friday.
According to the police investigation, Goru was running an illicit bottling unit at Hamirpur in collusion with Praveen Thakur. It was also revealed that the raw material for production and packaging was received from other persons belonging to different states.
One Sagar Saini, who belonged to Delhi, supplied the spirit drums and AK Tripathi, who hailed from Samba, Jammu and Kashmir, provided the formula, the police said.
Further, it was revealed that the bottling unit in Hamirpur was run by two persons who belonged to Uttar Pradesh.
A war of attrition has already begun between the ruling BJP and Congress on how to really patronize the liquor mafia in the state as how come the trade did not come to light before seven deaths.
Hooch deaths in Himachal Pradesh are rare, unlike Bihar and UP though the state is known for a high consumption of liquor as being a tourist state.
