Three held for selling local whisky as foreign scotch

The Maharashtra excise department busted a spurious liquor racket in an industrial unit in south Mumbai on Saturday.

In a raid, the department seized nearly 500 litres of low-quality local whisky that was packaged and was to be sold as scotch brands in the city.

Excise deputy commissioner Naik Navre said, “Three persons have been arrested and a manhunt has been launched to nab Chandran Shankar Kakkatil, the mastermind.”

According to assistant inspector Sanjay Bhosale, a ground-floor tenement in Lucky building in the Fort area was raided. “A cursory glance indicated stacks of foreign liquor brands like ‘Teacher’ and ‘Black Label’ scotch whisky. But investigations revealed that the contents of these bottles were actually whisky procured cheaply in Union Territory regions like Daman.”

Three persons — Anish Ayappan Narayan, Kachu Vasu Narayan and Rajan Rajgopal Pujari — were arrested. They told the excise officials that they procured empty bottles of popular foreign liquor brands and filled them up with cheaper liquor. Their employer had a network of unsuspecting consumers to whom the spurious liquor was sold.

The racket was on for the past five months, excise officials said.

dnacity@dnaindia.net