Continuing on our ground report story on the spurious liquor mafia of Punjab, in this article we dive deeper into the story and try to provide our readers with further details of the incident moreover, the reasons behind why the Punjab government has become deaf, dumb, and mute on the matter.
Every year, the Government of Punjab rakes in four to six thousand crore ruppes from the liquor industry. According to reports, 2017 the state’s income through this industry was 4,460 crores, in 2018, it stood at 5,153 crore rupees after which the govt. of Punjab raised its target to 6,000 crores for the year 2019 on predictions based on the income of the previous year’s which witnessed an increase of 693 crore rupees or roughly 13.44% however, the revenue raked in stood at a measly 5,072 crores, 81 crore rupees lesser than 2018.
The reason behind this is the illegal liquor mafia present in Punjab. It isn’t as though this mafia has appeared on the scenes out of nowhere rather, have been actively running its operations for more than a decade!
Since the past two years, the liquor mafia have significantly increased their activities and have now “professionally streamlined” their illicit business activities as the cost of people’s lives! (*This may sound a bit absurd to our readers but*) These shady self styled ring leaders that are behind the spurious liquor nexus have established networks that are so organized; one may almost think that these messengers rather, “suppliers of death” are Management Graduates!
Women too have been recruited in Punjab to carry out their dubious activities. The Punjab Police have reportedly arrested four women “liquor smugglers” from Amritsar, Batala and Tarn Taran among 25 persons during raids conducted in the state in the past three days. Earlier, the rural police arrested a man for selling illicit liquor and also booked his wife in the case. On Friday, they booked two women among four members of a family for selling illicit liquor. “The involvement of women in the illicit drug or liquor trade is not new. In fact, it is usually a family business. If the men are outside for some work, the women supply the liquor to the customers,” said an official.
According to reports, the illegal liquor mafia has more than 500 members involved with some prominent personalities in the midst that reportedly include Politicians from the Majha and Doaba regions of Punjab who also happen to be owners of their own distilleries, high ranking officials from the Excise Department and senior officers from the Punjab Police. This is the sole reason why the state hasn’t seen an end to this decade’s old problem. Whatever little bit of investigation or action that has been carried out has been on junior level officers of the Punjab police and excise department simply to fool the naïve minds of the public into believing that the government is doing everything in its power to put an end to this nexus.
Also Read: True Scoop Ground Report: Politicians+ Black Sheep= Liquor Mafia
According to reports, the E.D stated that there is an underlying case of money laundering in the midst of all of this and more than two to three thousand crore rupees have been earned by the people involved in this nexus since 2017.
Neither the police nor the excise department have been cooperating with the ED in solving this case because it is reported that if the ED does in fact investigate this case, 25-30 prominent politicians along with other high ranking officials of the present Punjab regime fear being unmasked.
What’s surprising is that the problem doesn’t only lie with the locally produced liquor. 7 distilleries in total from Rajpura, Khanna, and Ludhiana, have been caught red handedly supplying “fake imported liquor”. These distilleries have been purchasing imported liquor bottles from scrap/ junk dealers, adding cheap locally produced liquor and selling them at premium prices.
The ED are now investigating the sale of approximately 700 crore rupees of liquor during the lockdown along with the supposed and dubious “foreign made liquor”.
This matter has now started to take a political turn.
Recently Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal issued a statement saying that the CBI should investigate the spurious liquor racket in Punjab to which Captain Amarinder Singh, the CM of Punjab replied by saying-
“Don’t play politics. So many people have died and all you are interested in is making political meat from the incident. Kejriwal should mind his own business and not to exploit the tragic affair for reviving his party’s fortunes in the state. So many people have died and all he is interested in is making political meat from the incident”.
Trashing Kejriwal’s claim that “none of the illicit liquor cases from the last few months have been solved by the local police,” Capt Amarinder asked the AAP leader to verify his facts.
“Even in the sacrilege cases, the CBI failed to deliver and state police are unraveling the case and have made significant progress. More than the CBI, it is in the interest of the local police to ensure that all criminal cases are solved expeditiously,” he said.
Bhagwant Mann president of AAP Punjab, who visited the victims’ kin at Pandori Gola, Bhullar, Kaka Kandiala and Mucchal villages, alleged that the government functionaries had been hiding the illicit liquor death toll in the garb of Covid. If this is indeed true, the actual death toll could be higher than what has been presently reported.