Patna: Bihar police are so obsessed with prohibition that even people involved in illegal sand mining have been booked on the charges of violating the Bihar Excise and Prohibition Act, 2016.

The cops' faux pass came to the fore when they submitted a copy of an FIR to the Dehri sub-divisional court in Rohtas district seeking legal action against the owner of a tractor that the Dehri town police station seized on November 8 last year.

A team headed by inspector Ramashankar Singh had seized an overloaded tractor carrying sand. The inspector lodged an FIR and booked the owner of the vehicle under sections of the dry law, besides sections 379 and 411 of the IPC.

Sub-divisional judicial magistrate (SDJM) Himanshu Pandey was stunned to see the copy of the FIR and the sections imposed. He issued a show cause notice to the Dehri town police station house officer (SHO) Dharmendra Kumar. On February 11 this year, the SHO admitted the lapses on the part of the investigating officer Singh, and requested to the court to rectify the errors. In his petition, the SHO said that it was a human error and he would personally keep it in mind not to repeat such a mistake in future.

On Tuesday, the court accepted SHO Kumar's request to change the wrong sections invoked in the FIR and add relevant sections of the Illegal Mining and Transportation (Development and Regulation) Rule 2017 and the Motor Vehicle Act.

Sources claimed that similar complaints have been received from police stations across the state. The police headquarters has told superintendents of police to take extra precaution while dealing with cases related to prohibition. Over 1 lakh persons have been booked and 90,000 FIRs lodged since total prohibition was clamped on Bihar in April 2016.