MANGALDAI, April 25 - Police arrested three persons on charges of illegally transporting an inter-State consignment of liquor and sent them to judicial custody through the court on Friday.
Two trucks bearing registration numbers NL-01-L-6374 and RJ-52-GA-1305, each carrying an consignment of 1,200 cartons of beer worth around Rs 35 lakh from Arunachal Pradesh to Tura in Meghalaya, were detained by police on suspicion from near the NRL petrol depot at Pipora Dokan near here on Wednesday night. The vehicles were brought to Mangaldai Police Station for verification.
However, the failure of submission of necessary documents led the police to register a case and arrest the custodian Dinesh Sarma (Palwal, Haryana) and the drivers, Ranjan Haldar (Bargang, Biswanath) and Kiran Saikia (Gohpur, Biswanath).
�We arrested Dinesh Sarma, the manager and the two drivers as they failed to produce necessary documents and their statements were also not convincing. All of them were sent to judicial custody following their production before the court today,� said Mangaldai PS Officer in Charge Inspector Niranjan Baruah.
Sources in the Darrang Excise Department on condition of anonymity stated that their staff only accompanied police to bring the trucks from Pipora Dokan to Mangaldai PS under the instruction of the Excise Intelligence Bureau, Guwahati who had earlier held discussions with senior officials of Darrang police in this regard. However, this newspaper�s attempt to get a reaction from Subhash Baisya, Inspector of EIB over phone on Saturday failed.
Enforcement Inspector of Darrang Transport Office Dipak Patowary said that both the vehicles were intercepted during a routine check on NH-15 at Menapara, east of Mangaldai, on March 23. But non-production of documents compelled them to seize the invoice of the consignments as per law.
�The challans were seized following official norms for non-production of documents. They requested us to allow some time to collect the documents and money for fines from their owners. However, due to the lockdown from the very next day, the issue was left hanging,� Patowary clarified.
