Patna, Oct. 2: The searchlights of the administration's anti-liquor drive has caught the Royal Stag - not the male deer but a whisky brand that is proving to be the most popular among alcohol peddlers.
Of the roughly 1.5 lakh litres of Indian-made foreign liquor (IMFL) seized since April 5 when total prohibition came into effect, over 80 per cent is of this brand manufactured by Pernod Ricard India.
Almost every seizure made from bootleggers or trucks invariably consists of large 750ml bottles of the whisky brought illegally - mostly from Haryana, and at times from Jharkhand and Bengal.
"There are two reasons behind Royal Stag being the most preferred brand for liquor smugglers," a senior excise official told The Telegraph under cover of anonymity. "One, it already had a burgeoning market in Bihar when prohibition was clamped and many people used to consume it - it is acceptable to all classes in society. The second reason is that the whisky is available as cheap as Rs 250-300 per 750ml bottle in Haryana, where excise duty is very less. So it is picked up by bootleggers from there and brought here and sold at around Rs 1,500 to 1,600 per bottle. It is a highly profitable situation despite the long distance and massive transportation costs."
On September 27, police seized 1,251 large 750ml bottles of IMFL from two luxury cars under Barun police station in Aurangabad district, mostly Royal Stag. Eight youths, including seven from Haryana, were arrested.
Aurangabad SP Satya Prakash, who interrogated the culprit, revealed that the liquor mafia has carefully selected this brand of liquor after conducting a recce of the market.
"The liquor smugglers do not bring high-priced liquor because the people buying in the black market do not have the purchasing capacity. Royal Stag suits the market, and it provides a high profit margin to the smugglers," the Aurangabad SP told The Telegraph.
Satya Prakash added that a worrying aspect of the liquor smuggling that has come to light is that the people indulging in it are now luring unemployed youth from Haryana by giving them up to Rs 60,000 per trip to Bihar with the consignment. The recent arrests of the Haryana youths in a couple of seizure cases corroborate the trend.
Muzaffarpur excise superintendent Kumar Amit, who led the seizure of around 402 cartons of Royal Stag amounting to around 3,600 litres of whisky from a truck in the Turki police station area, said: "We could say that Royal Stag is the most popular brand in the bootlegging business, and is followed by Imperial Blue and McDowell's No. 1 as they all are not costly and people flouting prohibition can afford them even at thrice the maximum retail price."
The Haryana connection is not just because of low excise duty or presence of several distilleries and bottling plants there.
"The liquor trade in Haryana has big private players with countrywide political connections. One such person has close connections with one of the ruling parties in Bihar. These people are not satisfied with just catering to their trade in their own state and have a long history of expanding it illegally into other states," an excise source revealed. "Now they are targeting Bihar as there is a huge void to fill in Bihar in the aftermath of prohibition. There have been indications that they are using their full might in pushing liquor to our state."
Many consignments seized in Bihar had bottles with no MRP mentioned on them, which has raised the fear of spurious liquor.
"Empty Royal Stag bottles, newly printed labels and the cork could be easily procured and there are many bottling plants in Haryana and UP which also indulge in the business of spurious liquor," liquor expert Nawal Kishore Singh told The Telegraph.
Samples of seized IMFL have not been sent to laboratories for testing genuineness, excise sources said.
