Excise department busts spurious scotch racket ahead of Holi

The lure of that cheap bottle of scotch or premium whiskey offered to you at a discount by an acquaintance may best be avoided.

The state excise department has busted a racket wherein bootleggers were supplying spurious scotch for Holi and Rangapanchami revelries and parties. This brew, which is passed off as scotch to unsuspecting buyers, is actually inferior quality liquor in bottles of premium brands.

Last week, the state flying squad intercepted a car at Mahape junction and found 36 bottles of premium liquor during checking. When interrogated, the bootlegger is said to have spilled the beans, leading officers to an illegal godown near a plastic crushing unit on Shilphata, where 62 scotch bottles and 98 empty ones were recovered along with a stash of bottle caps.

The squad, guided by inspectors Mukund Bilolikar and Subhash Jadhav and led by sub-inspector Shankar Amberkar, recovered goods worth around Rs7.94 lakh.

"This duplicate scotch was meant to be passed off as the original and sold to people who host Holi and Rangapanchami revelries and parties," said a state excise official, adding that the liquor was being bottled in extremely unhygienic conditions.

Recently, the department had nabbed smuggled liquor worth Rs93.33 lakh from a container in Nashik. The duty-evaded liquor, bearing markings from Haryana and Punjab, consisted of 1,163 boxes of strong beer and premier brands of whiskey and was being brought in for sale during Holi.

Maharashtra follows a policy of discouraging liquor consumption through high prices and low sales and has one of the highest excise duty regimes in India. However, neighbouring states and union territories — Goa and Daman — have comparatively liberal policies, and the cheaper costs of liquor there lead to a huge incentive for smugglers and bootleggers to smuggle in the brew to Maharashtra, or for liquor duplicators to market their spurious produce.