Major gains achieved against hooch smugglers

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, April 30

Kangra police have achieved major gains in checking hooch production and smuggling on the border areas of the district. In the first three months of this year the police have registered 100 cases against those producing hooch and arrested about 50 people involved in the operations.

SP Kangra, while talking to The Tribune, said initially about 100 families living in the border areas of the district were involved in the trade of producing illegal hooch that was sold on both sides of the Punjab and Himachal border. After consistent police campaign, the number has been reduced to about 30 families. About 80 per cent of the trade has been curbed.

He said in police raids in the last three months about 15,000 litres of illegal hooch was destroyed. Initially, the police just used to catch people with illegal hooch. However, now the police have changed the strategy and the police was targeting the production units of illegal hooch.

The hooch was generally being produced in Majra area of Himachal along the Pathankot district of Punjab or mand area on the borders of Hoshiarpur district. “We have formed a special team of police headed by DSP that consistently keeps watch at places where the hooch distilleries are set. On the basis of the information collected by the group raids are conducted and hooch making units set up in deep forest and marshy areas are destroyed”, the SP said.

He said that in the recent past police used tractors to dig out drums filled with jaggery that was buried in Mand area. The jaggery was kept buried for fermentation and later was to be used for making hooch later.

For long some villages inhabited generally by Sansi community have been infamous for distilling illegal hooch and selling it in borders of Kangra district and Punjab border areas.

The sources in police said that since illegal hooch distillation operations brought in huge money many villagers had adopted it as a profession. They were not afraid of even cases registered against them under the Excise Act. However, in the recent past a dangerous trend was noticed by the police officials. It was found that many people, who were earlier involved just in making illegal liquor, had also started narcotic smuggling. In the recent past the police had arrested several persons from border areas on charges of peddling heroine.

For the first time the Kangra police also had started a move to confiscate the properties of the people against whom cases had been registered under the NDPS Act. The SP said it was found that many people caught under the NDPS Act had huge amounts in their bank accounts and properties worth crores without having any source of income.

“We have sealed their accounts and started the move to confiscate the properties. In one case Rs 90 lakh cash was found in accounts of a narcotic smuggler. He had constructed a house worth about Rs 1 crores. Procedure has been started to confiscate that house also”, he said.