After media reports last week on “rats having guzzled lakhs of litres of alcohol seized and stored at Bihar police stations”, the administration on Tuesday decided to do something a little stronger.
On Tuesday, 17,586 Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) bottles worth about ₹90 lakh seized from across Patna district were destroyed at an Excise Department godown at Khagaul, located on the outskirts of Patna.
A road roller crushed the bottles in front of Patna District Magistrate Sanjay Agrawal.
“We destroyed the seized bottles after completing court formalities. The process will continue in future too,” Mr. Agrawal told journalists.
In the neighbouring Nalanda district too, 4,172-litre of liquor bottles worth ₹75 lakh were destroyed by a road roller at Chandi Police station. Nalanda police had sought permission from the Magistrate to destroy liquor bottles seized in connection with 24 cases. Huge quantities of illegal alcohol bottles were confiscated from Nalanda districts during the past year.
Nalanda Superintendent of Police Kumar Ashish said: “The process will continue in future as well.”
Since Bihar was declared a dry State in April 2016, over 8-lakh litre of alcohol was seized and stacked in maalkhanas at police stations in all 38 districts.
The seized products include 5-lakh litre of IMFL and 3-lakh litre of country-made liquor.
Illegal consignments
According to official records, most illegal consignments seized under the stringent Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, had come from Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and West Bengal.
Despite senior officers claiming they hadn’t received reports from police stations regarding “tippler rats”, the government had asked the District Magistrates to destroy the seized bottles in their respective districts.
“Following court formalities, the District Magistrates started destroying the seized liquor bottles. The process will pick up momentum in the days to come...We’ll destroy all the seized liquor bottles,” a senior officer told The Hindu , adding “ na rahega baans, na bajegi baansuri [no one will be blamed when there’s no liquor left]”.
At a meeting with Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj on May 2, the in-charge of some of police stations had reportedly informed him that rodents were consuming liquor stocked at various maalkhanas .
