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Liquor smuggling: 216 bottles seized at Chandigarh railway station

CHANDIGARH: As many as 216 liquor bottles were recovered from platform numbers 2 and 3 of the railway station here in the wee hours of Sunday, said Railway Protection Force (RPF) officials.


During routine patrolling, a team of RPF personnel stumbled upon five polyurethane bags in which the cartons of liquor worth around Rs 42,000 had been kept.

There were 174 bottles of 999 Fine Whisky and 42 bottles of Fine Rum.

According to the RPF team, they found some unidentified cartons lying on the platform just before the arrival of Chandigarh-Dibrugarh train. When the passengers sitting near the bags were enquired about their owner, nobody claimed them. In fact, the team waited till the train left the station to know the claimant of the bags, but when nobody turned up. Finally, they opened the bags and found the liquor bottles inside.

The bottles were seized and handover to GRP/CDG for further legal action. Official said during the festival season also, they had recovered 11 bottles of whisky from platform number 2 and nobody had claimed them even that time.

The officials investigating the case said the modus operandi of the country-made liquor smugglers is that they give the consignments to someone to take them up to the train and during the journey, the same is handed over to the intended person. They said after interrogation of the suspects, they would come to know how many persons are involved in it and where they wanted to smuggle it.

Last year saw a steep hike in the smuggling of liquor from Chandigarh to mostly Uttar Pradesh. Over 1,200 bottles were recovered by the GRP from the city's railway station, out of which 333 bottles were recovered from seven persons, who were residents of Uttar Pradesh and 908 bottles were found lying unclaimed. According to GRP records , in 2017, 542 liquor bottles of various brands were recovered from the station.

Last year, the month of January saw the highest number of unclaimed 340 bottles of liquor being seized from platform number 1 of the Chandigarh railway station.

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