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Is imported liquor being smuggled into city through trains?

Two unclaimed parcels containing duty-free alcohol worth Rs2.88 lakh, found at LTT last week, raise suspicion

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Two unclaimed parcels containing imported liquor, found at the Lokmanya Tilak Terminus (LTT) in Kurla last week, have raised suspicions that duty-evaded imported liquor was being smuggled into Mumbai through the railways. Sources said the state excise department's probe into the parcels' case might blow the lid off a larger racket.

According to the officials, the liquor might have been smuggled into India from Sri Lanka and Thailand before being sent to Mumbai via rail from Kolkata.

"Last week, we were informed by the Railway Protection Force (RPF) about two unclaimed parcels at the LTT depot. We took the parcels, contained 45 bottles of premium imported liquor including scotch, whiskey and single malts, in our possession. They were sent from Kolkata to Mumbai. The liquor bottles were packed in carry bags from duty-free shops in Sri Lanka and Bangkok," said a senior official from the Maharashtra state excise flying squad. Collectively, the liquor was valued at over Rs2.88 lakh.

Another official said, "Markings on the parcels revealed that they had been dispatched by R Paswan in Kolkata to S Kumar in Mumbai. No further details are available." Excise officials might visit Kolkata for further investigation. The parcels were further packed in a sack, which had stickers and markings of a private commercial airline, but the company said the sack was being reused.

Inspectors Mukund Bilolikar and Subhash Jadhav, and sub-inspector Sanjiv Deore, are investigating the case under the guidance of state excise commissioner Vijay Singhal and director (vigilance and enforcement) BG Shekhar.

An excise official said in face of improved vigil at other entry points, smugglers might have found a new route to bring in duty-evaded liquor to Maharashtra by train. A transport permit is mandatory for bringing liquor from other states to Maharashtra.

Speaking to dna, Singhal noted that earlier this year, they had detected smuggling of duplicate liquor to Maharashtra from Goa through railways, leading to state excise department's raids in the neighbouring state. For the first time, recovery was made by the state authorities outside Maharashtra.

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. Neighbouring states and union territories such as Goa and Daman, however, have comparatively liberal policies and cheaper liquor. This is a huge incentive for smugglers and bootleggers to smuggle in the brew to Maharashtra.

With the neighbouring Gujarat under prohibition, Maharashtra has also become a transit point for transporting liquor from states such as Haryana and Madhya Pradesh to the dry state.

Meanwhile, a top railway official said, "It is not impossible for someone to use the railway route to transport liquor. After all in 2013, the railway police had uncovered a racket where gutkha was being smuggled into Maharashtra from the neighbouring states by booking them as legitimate parcels on Mumbai-bound trains."

The freight marketing circular 32 of 2006 of the railways states that the address of the consignor and the consignee will be noted in a Delivery Book. The same circular, however, mentions that the railways is not responsible for the authenticity of the address of the consignor or the consignee.

Also, due to sheer volume of parcels at certain stations, railways rules state that the railways commercial department must check about 20% of the parcels being loaded onto a train. This criteria, however, is seldom met due to the volume.

For instance, the Central Railway's (CR) two biggest termini in Mumbai – CST and Kurla LTT – deal in over 20,000 parcels with a cumulative weight of about 340 tons a day. On Western Railway (WR), just Mumbai Central sees almost 188 tons of parcels come into the station on trains every day and another 201 tons going out on trains.

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