Patna: Rohtas police seized around 350 cartons of liquor worth Rs 50 lakh from a pick-up van in the third such operation since last week.

A team from Dehri Town police station intercepted the van registered to Haryana following a tip-off, said Dehri sub-divisional police officer Javed Anwar Ansari, and seized the consignment early on Sunday morning.

The police also arrested the pick-up van's driver near Pali bridge in the district, which shares its border with Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh.

Sukhvir Singh, the driver hailing from Haryana's Bhiwani district revealed that he had dumped around 205 cartons at an abandoned house in Nasariganj, the police said. Later the team, headed by Dehri town police station house officer Dharmendra Kumar conducted a raid at New Diliyan and seized the consignment.

The team also recovered around 1,200 pouches of country liquor from the abandoned building.

Earlier, the police had recovered 35 cartons of Haryana-made alcohol from the pick-up van. The consignment was booked by one Tunda Chandrawanshi, a resident of New Diliyan, from Gurudaspur in Punjab.

On the night of April 27, another raid was conducted at New Diliyan and liquor worth over Rs 50 lakh seized. The truck driver hired to transport the consignment had managed to escape.

The abandoned truck and a motorbike were seized during the operation.

Prior to that, another police team recovered liquor worth Rs 40 lakh from a godown in Rudrapura village under Dehri Town police station. The godown was earlier used to stock stone chips and sand.

A source in the district intelligence unit revealed that the consignment seized from New Diliyan in the early hours of Sunday, was booked by one Asho Chandrawanshi, who has since gone underground.

Sub-divisional police officer Ansari said contraband liquor worth over Rs 2.5 crore had been seized from areas falling under his jurisdiction in the past one week. "The operation against liquor peddlers will continue," he asserted.