Digital Desk: A senior state police officer said that during the statewide crackdown against bootleggers that was ordered after the tragic deaths of 42 people in the Ahmedabad and Botad districts this week as a result of spurious liquor, the Gujarat police detained 2,500 people and seized illicit alcohol worth approximately Rs1.5 crore.
A statewide
campaign to enforce prohibition resulted in the registration of 198 cases for
selling Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) and the arrest of 191 suspects in the
previous 48 hours. According to Narsimha Komar, additional director general of
police (law and order), 3,971 cases involving domestic alcohol have been filed,
and 2,405 suspects have been taken into custody.
The hooch
disaster was made public early on Monday when some residents of Botad's Rojid
hamlet and nearby villages were sent to public hospitals in the Barvala region
and the town of Botad due to deteriorating health.
Nearly 97 persons
in the state are being treated at various hospitals after ingesting a toxic
substance that was combined with water and sold to them as homemade booze.
According to police department sources, three of them are in critical condition.
The police
officer said that six police officers had been suspended due to the disaster,
along with the district superintendents of police (SPs) of the Botad and
Ahmedabad Rural districts, Karanraj Vaghela and Virendra Singh Yadav,
respectively.
SP Yadav from
Ahmedabad Rural has been promoted to commandant of metro security-1 in
Ahmedabad, and Dr. Vaghela has been named commandant of Gandhinagar's
protection of government properties.
The six suspended
officers were deputy superintendent of police for Botad division SK Trivedi,
deputy superintendent of police for Dholka division NV Patel, police inspector
for Dhandhuka circle Suresh Chaudhary, police inspector for Dhandhuka circle KP
Jadeja, sub inspector for Ranpur Shailendrasinh Rana, and police inspector for
Barwala BG Vala. They were suspended for neglect of duty.
In accordance
with Indian Penal Code sections 302 (murder), 328 (causing bodily harm by
poison), and 120-B (criminal conspiracy), three first information reports
(FIRs) have been filed against approximately 20 individuals. The chemical the
deceased ingested included 99 percent methyl alcohol, according to forensic
reports.
Gujarat is a
"dry" state, meaning that it forbids the production, sale, and
consumption of alcoholic beverages. According to the Gujarat Prohibition Act,
if someone is caught buying, using, or serving alcohol without a permit, they
could face a prison sentence of three months to five years.
Investigators
claim that Jayesh aka Raju, who worked as a manager at a chemical company's
godown in Ahmedabad's Aslali district, took 600 litres of methyl alcohol. On
July 25, he sold it to his cousin Sanjay, who lives in Botad, for Rs 40,000.
Sanjay subsequently sold the booze to other local bootleggers, among them a
woman. Each of the pouches containing the chemical cost between Rs 20 and Rs
40.
"So far, we
have detained 15 people in connection with this crime, and during our
operation, we were able to recover 550 litres of the methyl alcohol that the
accused had stolen and marketed through a network. The potential harm has been
significantly reduced as a result of the big amount being seized, according to
Komar.
He claimed that
after many of the victims began to deteriorate, the police made contact with
them. Some people hid in fields, while others did so in the homes of family
members. The majority of them were contacted, and we made sure they received
the right care, according to Komar.
According to a state government release, the Gujarat home
department has established a three-person committee lead by senior Indian
Police Service officer Subhash Trivedi to undertake a thorough investigation
into the incident and provide a report within three days. Director of
Prohibition and Excise MA Gandhi and Director of Gujarat Forensic Science
Laboratory HP Sanghvi are the other two members of the committee.
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