Meghalaya police seizes 7,000 liters of spurious alcohol, 1 arrested

Guwahati: One person was arrested in connection with the seizure of over 7,000 litres of spurious liquor at Nongjri market in East Jaintia Hills district of Meghalaya on Wednesday, August 12.

As per reports, acting on a special tip-off, a special police team from Shillong went accompanied the East Jaintia police personnel on the mission to track down the outlawed substance.

"Yesterday, we initially recovered 3,000 litres of such adulterated liquor. Later, however, we were able to seize 7,000 litres, and maybe even more. As per my information, the alcohol had expired and the people who were running this illicit trade had laced it with some substance with high alcohol content", Deepak Kumar Palecha, the district police chief told The Sentinel Digital.

Palecha further informed us that this illegal operation has been going on in the area for quite a few months. "This process of selling expired liquor has been going on for some months. However, we are yet to receive health complaints from consumers", he said.

The entire operation took around 7-8 hours, and the case has now been taken up by the excise department, he added. "They will dig deeper into the matter and come up with some more details, hopefully. A case has been registered on the matter and investigation is on," he said.

The accused person was involved in selling this liquor which is being mixed with spirit and on his arrest, 3,000 litres of spurious liquor was seized.

Upon further interrogation, police launched a search operation and seized another 4,000 litres of such liquors.

According to the SP, samples of the seized liquor will be sent to the forensic laboratory to reveal the ingredients used in the manufacturing process of such liquor.

A close perusal of the bottles in which the laced liquor was kept revealed that the liquor had expired already. Officials believe that the accused mixed the alcohol with some other chemicals and was selling them to unsuspecting tipplers.

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