22 excise officials suspended in Chhattisgarh’s ‘Rs 3,200-crore liquor scam’

The agency has accused the department of running a “parallel” excise department, wherein liquor was sold to the public, but money was not deposited to the state exchequer.

Among the 22 accused officials who have been suspended, three are assistant district excise officers, five are deputy commissioners, ten are assistant commissioners, three district excise officers and an assistant excise officer.

The EOW’s supplementary chargesheet filed on July 7 also pegged the total money lost to the scam to Rs 3,200 crores up from the earlier amount of Rs 2,161crores pegged by the ED.

Explaining their roles in the scam, an EOW press statement says, “Between 2019 and 2023, these officers were working as district In-charge or on other posts in 15 big districts, where un-accounted duty paid liquor was sold parallel to duty paid liquor in government liquor shops, and some officers used to coordinate at the state level for this illegal liquor sale,”

“…as per the instructions of the excise syndicate, additional liquor was produced in distilleries, loaded in trucks and sent directly to the country liquor shops with high sales in the selected districts. Such liquor was sold parallel to the legal liquor brought to the shops on the basis of demand from the warehouse/government depot from the distillery, without paying any kind of government fee/duty,” it adds.

The excise officials got a commission from the illegal liquor sale.

While Kawasi Lakhma, former excise minister, has been arrested by ED, the central agency is probing the role of former CM Bhupesh Baghel and his son Chaitanya in the scam.

The ED had registered an Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR) in January last year against alleged mastermind of the liquor scam, Anwar Dhebar, who is the brother of former Raipur mayor Aijaz Dhebar; retired IAS officer Anil Tuteja, then joint secretary in Chhattisgarh; ITS Arun Pati Tripathi, then Special Secretary Government Commerce and Industry Department and MD, CG State Marketing Corporation Ltd; and others. Dhebar, Tuteja and Tripathi have been arrested by ED in the case too.