Two held in Bihar's Gaya for smuggling liquor in ambulance coffin

Two persons were arrested in Bihar's Gaya on Monday on the charge of smuggling liquor from Jharkhand, concealed in the coffin of an ambulance, Excise Department officials said.

The accused, identified as Lalit Kumar Mahto, a resident of Ranchi, and Pankaj Kumar Yadav, a resident of Chatra district in Jharkhand, had put a coffin in an ambulance to smuggle liquor. The excise sleuths have recovered 212 bottles of Indian Made Foreign Liquors of different brands inside the coffin.

The incident came to light on Monday morning when the accused came from Jharkhand via NH19. They were intercepted at Dobhi check post in Gaya district.

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"We were doing routine checking of vehicles coming from Jharkhand and West Bengal. We have spotted an ambulance coming from NH19. Our personnel stopped the ambulance. When we asked the driver Mahto, he said that a dead body was inside the coffin. When we asked them to open the coffin, they became uncomfortable. When we opened the coffin, 212 liquor bottles of different brands were found in it," Gaya's Excise Inspector Dipak Kumar Singh said.

The accused were booked under relevant sections of liquor prohibition act.

Liquor has been banned in Bihar since April 2016. Still, smugglers are using different modus operandi to smuggle liquor from neighbouring states like West Bengal, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh. A large number of smugglers also used the Nepal border route to smuggle liquor bottles.