Surat cops sniff outbooze behind onions

Bootleggers who tried to smuggle Indian Made Foreign Liquor concealed under sacks of onions in a truck were outsmarted by the police which seized the truck and the booty.

The Kosamba police in Surat has seized liquor worth Rs 23,04,000 concealed behind sacks of onions at Bhatkol village after a chase where the truck was forced to stop on Wednesday morning.

The seizure included 4,608 IMFL bottles, three mobile phones, cash Rs 16,150, truck worth Rs 7,00,000 and onions worth Rs 17,250 making the total seizure worth Rs 30, 57,900.

The driver Arjunkumar Vanshraj Yadav, resident of Nograhi village at Sultanpur in Uttar Pradesh and cleaner Yogesh Sanubhai Mistry, resident of a village at Amod in Bharuch were arrested on the spot, while two others – Vinod, the bootlegger responsible for loading the truck and Dhaval Jaiswal who was to receive the liquor – were declared absconders.

The seizure was made on a tip-off and the truck that was travelling on the Ahmedabad-Mumbai national highway was first sighted by the Kosamba police team at Kim Crossroads. The police team asked it to halt but the driver accelerated and drove onto the Kim-Mandvi Road. The police team chased the truck in official as well as private vehicles and finally managed to forcibly stop the truck at Bhatkol village on the Kim-Mandvi road.

Yadav, the driver revealed during questioning to the police that he was handed over the truck on the road heading from Nasik to Dhulia by one Vinod, whose name and address he was unaware of. The cleaner Mistry said he has been asked by Dhaval Jaiswal, resident of Dabhoi in Vadodara, to reach National Hotel where he was told to accompany the truck driver to Kim railway crossing from where a man would come to lead them further. The police caught them before they could reach the railway crossing.

The police recovered 384 boxes of Master Moment whisky stacked beneath sacks of onions. Surat Rural SP A M Muniya told Mirror, “The truck had entered from Maharashtra and was headed to Surat. We are questioning the driver and cleaner of the truck and will initiate the process to arrest the sender of the consignment and the person who was to take delivery.”