Chhattisgarh liquor scam: Excise dept special secy arrested

Tripathi was produced before a special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court, which  remanded him to ED’s custody for three days, ED’s lawyer Saurabh Pandey told PTI.

The official will be again produced in the court along with co-accused Anwar Dhebar, Nitesh Purohit and Trilok Singh Dhillon alias Pappu (who were arrested earlier) on May 15, he added.

Anwar Dhebar, elder brother of Raipur Mayor and Congress leader Aijaz Dhebar, was the first person to be arrested by the agency in the case last week.

The ED has alleged that Chhattisgarh’s state-owned marketing company did not record the supply of 40 lakh cases of country liquor by distillers and sold these through its own vends to the common public at a price of Rs 3,880 per case, thereby causing huge loss to the exchequer. According to the ED, distillers allegedly supplied over 40 lakh cases of country liquor to Chhattisgarh State Marketing Corporation Ltd (CSMCL) between April 2019 and June 2022.

In February 2019, a couple of months after the Congress came to power, the state government appointed Arunpati Tripathi, an Indian Telecom Services officer,  to lead CSMCL and, in May 2019 appointed him as its Managing Director.