After trucks, pick-up vans, tankers, tractors, ambulances, cars, trains, boats and motorcycles, the latest mode of transport to feature in the smuggling of liquor in dry Bihar is the humble bullock cart.
Officials of the Prohibition, Excise and Registration Department detained a bullock cart laden with illegal liquor worth ₹5 lakh in Gopalganj district on February 13. Two bulls and the cart were taken to the department’s godown near Banjari Mor in the town. Gopalganj shares a border with the neighbouring State of Uttar Pradesh.
“We seized Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) worth of ₹5 lakh from a bullock cart on Tuesday. The bullock cart, the oxen and the seized liquor were produced before the special excise court today (Thursday), and the court directed that the oxen be handed over to someone to be taken care of,” Gopalganj Excise Department Superintendent Amritesh Kumar Jha said.
“We are looking for some people to hand over the oxen to them for their proper care and upkeep,” District Excise Inspector Piyush Kumar said.
The smugglers, however, escaped.
Bihar was declared a dry State under the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act, 2016, which strictly bans the manufacture, sale and consumption of liquor. Innovative efforts to smuggle liquor from the State’s border districts, including West and East Champaran; neighbouring States such as Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal; and as far afield as Haryana, Punjab, and Nepal, have persisted. Illegal liquor has been unearthed from oil tankers, under sacks of vegetables, wrapped in shrouds inside ambulances, milk canisters, the pantry cars of trains, cooking gas cylinders, cars, and even from boats plying the rivers of bordering States.
In October 2022, a villager named Om Prakash Yadav from the Nautan block of West Champaran district was arrested for allegedly smuggling illegal liquor in a bullock cart driven by a pair of oxen. He was later asked by the police on the order of the local excise court to take care of the bulls. When Yadav was sent to jail, his wife and family members wanted to “get rid of the bulls” as the animals were a financial burden to them.
To check smuggling of illegal liquor into the dry State, the police have formed around 180 anti-liquor task force teams, 25 trained dog squads, deployed drones, arranged speedboats for riverine areas, and image mapping scanners at border check points. The police have registered 72,062 First Information Reports (FIR), arrested 1.43 lakh people, and seized 17,183 trucks and containers under the liquor law. Besides, hundreds of police personnel Excise Department officials have been placed under suspension for violations of the Prohibition Act.
In dry Bihar, 25.09 lakh litres of IMFL and 14.53 lakh litres of country-made liquor were seized between April 2016 to 2023, and 39.63 lakh litres of liquor has been seized in the State since April 2016. “This means, officially, on an average, 10,858 litres of illegal liquor is seized every day in Bihar,” a senior police official told The Hindu, preferring anonymity, adding, “The volume of liquor seized in 2023 was 19% more than in 2022.”
However, police records show the conviction rate in liquor-related cases has remained very low, with 1,522 persons convicted in 1,215 cases from 2016 to 2023.
