Excise will watch out for spurious alcohol on New Year’s Eve
For the first time, the state excise department will use Counterfeit Liquor Detection machines to check on spurious liquor doing the rounds on New Year’s Eve. The department has 15 machines that can check fake or adulterated liquor. The department will also take the help of liquor manufacturers who will assist it in identifying fake liquor.
Officials said they have formed teams of 111 to collaborate with liquor manufacturers’ teams. Machines provided by liquor companies will have their own workers checking the liquor. With a system to differentiate between a bottle’s real seal and duplicate seal, such machines will be able to check each bottle in 15 seconds. Four different companies will provide their own counterfeit liquor detection machines to check the seals of their liquor bottles.
State excise commissioner Vijay Singhal said, “It is the first time we are working with liquor company squads. Identifying real liquor bottles from fake ones will be easier because of these machines. Also for the first time, we have added a clause in the licence that liquor consumers should have the liquor bill to check where the liquor was bought. We are getting so much appreciation for this addition to curb spurious liquor.”
Further, bottles of foreign brands like Black Label, Red Label, Blenders Pride and Jack Daniel’s are duplicated and local liquor is filled inside and transported to Mumbai and other cities, excise officials have found. The department only recently seized thousands of bottles of duplicate liquor where dealers had taken used bottles from scrap and sealed them after pouring in duplicate, low quality liquor.
To counter this problem, a separate brand protection unit has been established to curb sale of duplicate liquor in parties all over Maharashtra. Forty-eight border checkpoints have been established in the state to curb entry of duplicate liquor. Officials will check all vehicles plying from Goa. Through fortnightly enquiries over the past three months, officers have registered 11,065 such cases and arrested 6,101 persons, recovering Rs 200,556,469. Officers have also taken action against some 1,000 owners who sell liquor at a price higher than its MRP.
Mr Singhal said, “We will be very strict during the next three days. We will be checking private parties too. To avoid any problems, citizens should buy liquor from authorised shops and take bills from these shops. Licences will be checked at every party in the city.”
