Liquor for yearend parties has already entered Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar districts and has been kept in rural areas.
The police in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar have been raiding farmhouses in right earnest to stop yearend liquor parties but the liquor mafia seems to have beaten them in the game.
Sources in the illicit liquor trade said that, so far, bootleggers active in these areas have already added more than 6,000 bottles of liquor to their stocks for the party season. The only impact the police raids are likely to have are to push up the cost of liquor this season, the sources said.
"The price of liquor for yearend parties is likely to range from Rs500 a bottle to Rs4,000 a bottle, depending on the brand," a source said.
Some bootleggers alleged that, more often than not, the police had acted as mere spectators while the couriers transported the liquor to places where they are stocked. They told DNA that the liquor had already arrived within Ahmedabad district limits by the Palanpur route.
A partygoer, who is understandably miffed with the police, said on the condition of anonymity that no courier or bootlegger had been touched by the police despite their claim that they had intensified patrolling. He alleged that the police had given bootleggers a clear field to replenish their stock without fear of arrest.
Sources in the illicit liquor trade said that bootleggers keep their liquor stocks usually in the rural areas of Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar. The liquor arrives in trucks and is then transferred to smaller vehicles such as Scorpio cars to be delivered to store rooms in the countryside.
Rajpath Club director, JB Patel, said while talking to DNA that even if it is granted that people organizing booze parties procure the liquor from bootleggers, how does the liquor enter Gujarat in the first place?
"What are the police in the border districts of the state and even those patrolling the streets of the city doing to stop liquor consignments from reaching their destination in Gujarat?" he said. Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar police recently busted two booze parties and arrested many people from the party venues.
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