Sunday, Nov 17, 2002
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Kerala-Thiruvananthapuram
By G. Anand
An activist says small and large consignments of spirit concealed in trucks carrying vegetables, provisions, sand, bricks and fish are coming unimpeded into the city and suburbs through the Amaravila border check-post in Parassala. With nearly 3,000 cargo vehicles passing every day through the check-post, checking for spirit and cheap liquor of dubious quality is like searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack, local police officials said. There are 15 check-posts for manning the 20-odd entry points into the State from Tamil Nadu. The police constables detailed for manning the check-posts are not more than 30. Prohibition activists say that the spirit smugglers have a choice of selecting the check-post through which they can bring in the load. They usually select the check-post where officers on their payroll are present. The check-posts manned by honest officers are avoided. The spirit smugglers also seem to sit on top of a network through which they get accurate information about police movement and vehicle checks. This helps them divert the spirit consignments at the last minute to byroads and lanes where the vehicles are parked hidden till the police checking on the road is over. The spirit smugglers use mobile phones and motorcycle borne scouts to gather information about police movements. If prohibition activists are to be believed, corrupt elements in the local police also pass on information in advance about combing operations and checking to spirit smugglers for a price. "Whenever, the police intensifies checking at Parassala, the spirit consignments coming into the State are stopped in Kanyakumari district itself,'' says a local official. Moreover, corrupt elements among check-post officials reportedly have a network of agents through which they liase with spirit smugglers. The agents include local pan-shop owners and those who run wayside eateries. The going rate for one load of spirit during the festival seasons of Onam and Christmas is fixed at Rs. 40,000 and higher, says a prohibitionist in the area. The scouts who pilot the spirit consignment on motorbike or car hands over the money to the agent and specifies the number of the vehicle which is cleared for entry after a perfunctory check. The clearance is often done without recording the details of vehicle and registration particulars in the records of the Sales Tax, Excise or Motor Vehicle check-posts, he says. The amount is handed over to the corrupt officials when they finish their shift. The agent gets a small cut for his troubles. Police sources say that spirit smugglers use stolen vehicles or ones without proper registration which are available at cheap rates in Tamil Nadu or Karnataka. The crew are given fake registration books and fabricated tax tokens. The driver is often an expert who has made several spirit `runs'. The instruction is to abandon the consignment and escape if cornered by the police, so that there is no trial leading back to the smuggler or the source of the illicit spirit. Several police investigations into spirit smuggling cases had run into a dead-end with the police being unable to trace the registered owner of the vehicle used for ferrying spirit. The crew of the spirit lorries are rarely caught. The ones who have been arrested know little about the full scope of the operation and could tell the police little about their `real handlers'. Most of the spirit consignment detections in Parassala, Vellarada and Pozhiyoor police stations bordering Tamil Nadu have been made by the local police. The record of spirit detection by the Excise Department in the border areas has been dismally poor. An official said the spirit mafia in Neyyatinkara-Parassala area, which was once deeply divided, has closed ranks against the police.
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