ED: Huge liquor quantities illegally sold by state PSU in Chhattisgarh

After Saturday’s arrest of Anwar Dhebar, brother of Congress leader and Raipur Mayor Aijaz Dhebar, the ED submitted in the court that the state government (under then Chief Minister Raman Singh of BJP) had in 2017 put in place a new policy for sale of liquor and also set up CSMCL to retail liquor in the state through its stores.

“Though started with a noble objective, a change in the state government 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 senior bureaucrats of state, politicians and officials of the excise department,” the ED told the court.

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

To ensure spurious liquor was not sold, the state used to paste special holograms on bottles to certify their genuineness. While earlier, the syndicate allegedly took commission only from the manufacturers for sale of liquor through state-owned vends, the ED alleged that the government decided to itself engage in illegal sale of liquor through its vends beginning 2019.

To facilitate this, the company making holograms was changed. The new company, the ED has alleged, was asked to manufacture fake holograms along with genuine ones. These fake holograms, the ED claimed, were supplied directly to Tripathi who then sent them to distillers manufacturing country liquor. The distillers pasted these fake holograms on liquor bottles, it alleged.

Sources in ED said the agency noted a corresponding dip in the production of distillers given that the sale of liquor with fake holograms were not recorded.

The ED probe has also alleged that the firm making these holograms paid Rs 50 lakh to another company in which Tripathi’s wife has “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 the company sold as its own,” a senior ED official said.

To ensure there were no loose ends, the contract to collect cash (from liquor vends) and provide manpower (to liquor vends) were given to related entities. While the cash contract was given to Dhebar’s alleged associate Vikas Agarwal through M/s Tops Securities, the manpower contract was given to M/s Sumeet Facilities Ltd, a company associated with Agarwal, the ED has alleged.

ED has claimed that apart from duplicate holograms, duplicate bottles were also procured and liquor was supplied to vends bypassing state warehouses. “The entire sale was off the books. Entire sale consideration was siphoned off with each person getting its share including the distiller, transporter, hologram maker, bottle maker, excise official, higher echelons of excise department, Anwar Dhebar, senior IAS Officer(s) and Politicians,” the ED has told court.

When legal sale was made earlier, officials allegedly took Rs 100 as illegal commission per case that was produced at a cost of Rs 590 per case; more than Rs 3,200 per case went to the exchequer. When illegal sale started, sources in ED said, the distillers did not have to pay any commission. “But Rs 150 per case was fixed to be distributed among Tripathi, Dhebar and one more member of the syndicate; Rs 150 was allegedly distributed among district level excise officers, district administration officials and local police,” an ED source, who did not wish to be named, alleged. The rest of the money was allegedly distributed among senior bureaucrats and politicians, the source claimed.

Claiming that such illegal sale made up close to 30-40 per cent of all liquor sales in the state, the ED has said, “The target of kacha liquor sale was flexible and, on an average, around 200 trucks carrying 800 cases of country liquor per month were supplied by the distillers to the syndicate during F. 2019-20. This number of Part-B (illegal liquor) trucks rose to around 400 trucks per month in 2022-23.”

In its remand application against Dhebar in court, ED has also alleged that IAS officer Anil Tuteja, Joint Secretary in the Department of Industry and Commerce in the state, was the “kingpin” of the scam.

“That there is specific digital evidence depicting delivery of Rs 14.41 crore by Mr. Anwar Dhebar to Mr. Anil Tuteja. That there is specific digital evidence depicting that the syndicate was extorting money in the PWD department, horticulture department, Liquor & others,” the ED said in its remand application.

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