Patna Junction: Trains are being used to smuggle liquor into prohibition-clamped Bihar.
A coach attendant of the Patna-bound Rajdhani Express was arrested by the government railway police (GRP) here on Thursday on the charge of smuggling liquor in violation of provisions of the Bihar Prohibition and Excise Act 2016.
Acting on a tip-off that a big haul of liquor was being transported by train, a GRP team searched AC 3-tier coach B9 of the Rajdhani. The members of the raiding team recovered 15 bottles of Indian-made foreign liquor from a bag reportedly belonging to the coach attendant, Rambali Paswan.
Rambali was immediately taken into custody and brought to the GRP police station at Patna Junction for interrogation. Later, he was produced in the railway court, which remanded him to judicial custody for 14 days. He was also sent for medical examination to ascertain whether he had consumed liquor or not.
The police interrogators asked Rambali, a resident of Muzaffarpur in north Bihar, if he did not know that manufacture, consumption and sale of alcohol was completely banned in the state. The coach attendant, according to police sources, said he had brought the consignment from Delhi for use at his relative's marriage to be held this month.
Patna superintendent of rail police Ashok Kumar Singh said the authorities have stepped up vigil on long distance trains following intelligence inputs that liquor was being smuggled in them to the state. On Tuesday, four railway employees were nabbed from a Patna-bound train and 302 bottles of liquor were seized.
The consignment was found in the locomotive cabin of the driver of the Ahmedabad-Patna Express at Danapur. Half of the consignment was delivered to a bootlegger at Ara railway station in Bhojpur. The arrested persons were identified as Manjeet Kumar Singh (guard) Shashuddin (loco pilot), Santosh Choubey (assistant loco pilot) and Naushad Ali (railway employee posted in Jabalpur).
Sources said bootleggers were now finding smuggling of liquor by train safe as the police have upped their vigil on trucks and other modes of transport in the wake of chief minister Nitish Kumar's directive on strict implementation of the prohibition law.
