Twists and turns to liquor recovery drama from JD(U) leader’s house at CM’s home block
Patna,(BiharTimes): The Nalanda district administration has given clean chit to the Harnaut block Janata Dal (United) chief, Chandradeep Kumar Sen, for ‘keeping’ 168 bottles of countrymade liquor. Instead it detained seven excise department personnel, including its district superintendent Ram Babu, four sub-inspectors for several hours at Deep Nagar police station on Wednesday.
One of the excise sub inspectors, Deepak Kumar Singh, was interrogated for 12 hours on September 1.
Forty-eight year old Sen was arrested after 168 bottles of countrymade liquor were recovered from his house on August 30.
The excise department claimed that in all five cartons of countrymade liquor were hidden inside a haystack at Sen’s residential premises while two cartons were recovered from a locked room in his house at Lohra village under Harnaut police station.
Sen was sent to jail after the recovery of bottles. This sparked off protests by his party workers and supporters.
According to Nalanda SP Kumar Ashish excise superintendent Ram Babu, four sub-inspectors, including Deepak Kumar Singh who had conducted the raid, and two homeguard jawans were quizzed by Deep Nagar police to know from where and how they had received the information about liquor kept in JD(U) neta's house.
However, the SP refused to elaborate further.
As Harnaut is chief minister Nitish Kumar’s home turf and the man in question is the block president of the ruling Janata Dal (United) it was bound to raise suspicion.
Reports suggested that Deepak was pressurized by the police to give a written statement that he was bribed to conduct raids at Sen’s house.
Reports also said that Principal Secretary Excise K K Pathak had to intervene in the matter.
Denying that he was behind a conspiracy hatched to defame and arrest Sen Deepak said the police is questioning him when the fact is that as an excise inspector whenever he gets a tip off he carries raids and seizes liquor.
“I never ask who the person is or to which party he belongs while arresting the accused. This is for the first time that such thing is happening to me”, he was quoted in the media.
BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav has directly accused chief minister for the incident as Harnaut is his home block.
“It is not possible to plant 168 bottles of liquor in someone’s house”, Nand Kishore said.
Ironically, JD(U) is claiming that the arrest of Chandradeep was a glaring instance of misuse of the prohibition law.
According to party spokesman Neeraj Kumar there is provision in the law that anyone who plants liquor in someone’s house will be dealt with accordingly. In the Harnaut case it has been found that liquor was planted at JD(U) leader’s house. If BJP has proof that government is trying to protect they should make it public, he said.
Meanwhile, police have also detained Sumrendra Kumar, former chief of Lohra Panchayat in this connection. Police has alleged that to avenge the defeat of his wife in Panchayat elections Sumrendra may have planted the liquor bottles in Sen’s house.
Nalanda DM Thiyagarajan SM said Sen was implicated by his co-villager Sumrendra Singh (42), whose wife lost the last panchayat election for mukhiya post to Sen's wife Madhumita by 18 votes only.
According to him police later recovered five empty bottles of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) from Sumrendra's house. He further added that Sumrendra acted as informer for the excise sleuths.
The DM also said Sumrendra admitted that he, along with three other persons, had planted the liquor at Sen's house.>
