Alleged liquor scam in Chhattisgarh: what the investigation has found

The ED has alleged that Lakhma received Rs 72 crore from the alleged scam and used some of the money to build a Congress office and a home for his son Harish, in Sukma.

Several officials and middlemen have been arrested earlier in the case. Baghel has denied the allegations earlier, and described the ED as the “BJP’s political agent”.

The alleged liquor scam

Details of the investigation accessed by The Indian Express show that between April 2019 and June 2022, distillers contracted to supply country liquor to government vends allegedly supplied more than 40 lakh cases of country liquor that were not recorded in the books.

According to the ED, while the liquor was sold to the public for Rs 3,880 per case, not a rupee went to the state exchequer.

The ED has alleged that fake government holograms were pasted on liquor bottles – and the company that was hired to produce these holograms had dealings with a firm associated with a state bureaucrat.

The ED had earlier arrested Anwar Dhebar, brother of Congress leader and Raipur Mayor Aijaz Dhebar; former IAS officer Anil Tuteja; Managing Director of Chhattisgarh State Marketing Corporation Limited (CSMCL) Arun Pati Tripathi; Nitesh Purohit, an associate of Anwar Dhebar’s; and Trilok Singh Dhillon, a middleman whose accounts were allegedly used to launder the money.

Lakhma is the first politician to have been arrested in the case.

Alleged modus operandi

In 2017, the Chhattisgarh government, which was then led by Raman Singh of the BJP, implemented a new excise policy, and set up the CSMCL to retail liquor through its stores. According to the ED, the government’s objective was “noble”, but the policy was misused after Baghel took over.

“…A change in the state government [in 2018] led to change of management of CSMCL and it became the tool in the hands of the syndicate which used it to enforce a parallel excise department. The syndicate comprises of senior bureaucrats of state, politicians and officials of excise department,” the ED has told the court.

In February 2019, Arun Pati Tripathi, an Indian Telecommunication Service officer, was chosen to lead CSMCL. In May, he was made Managing Director of CSMCL. According to the ED, the illegal sale of liquor through government vends started that year.

To facilitate the illegal sale, the company making the special holograms (to act as certificates of genuineness) for the liquor bottles was changed – and the new company was asked to make fake holograms along with the genuine ones, the ED has alleged.

The fake holograms were allegedly supplied directly to Tripathi, who then sent them to the manufacturers of country liquor, who pasted them on bottles that were to be kept off the books.

The ED has also found that the hologram company paid Rs 50 lakh to a company in which Tripathi’s wife had a “direct interest”. “Although this transaction is shown to be for a software purchase, investigations have shown that the software in question was actually an NIC software that the company sold as its own,” a senior ED official said.

Apart from duplicate holograms, duplicate bottles were also procured, and liquor was supplied to vends bypassing state warehouses, the investigation has found.

“The entire sale was off the books. Entire sale consideration was siphoned off with each person getting its share including – Distiller, Transporter, Hologram maker, Bottle maker, Excise official, higher echelons of Excise Dept, Anwar Dhebar, Senior IAS Officer(s) and Politicians,” the agency has told the court.

According to the ED, the syndicate earned illegal gratification through three different means: illegal commission on legal sale of country liquor, cartelisation of IMFL sale, and illegal sale of country liquor. “The last was the biggest generator of illicit cash and this modus operandi has not been seen anywhere else,” a senior ED official said.