Thiruvananthapuram: The excise department will focus on cross border liquor smuggling in the ongoing anti-tobacco operation ‘Bhai’ as the demand for illegal liquor is expected to go up ahead of Onam. Special drives to bust illegal liquor sales across the district have started last week itself with hundreds of litres of wash and dozens of litres of arrack being destroyed around Neyyatinkara.
The operation will continue till September. Additional men will be posted at around 14 checkpoints across the district. Shadow officers will be deployed in each range to sneak into the illegal liquor dens and drug cartels as potential customers and dealers. “Officers in each range will liaise with local police to hold combined raids. Apart from these are shadow teams and border patrolling parties,” officials said.
Officials, meanwhile, have dropped the demand for sniffer dogs at the checkpost after finding that it was a failure. The sniffer dogs could not even detect spirit in trucks which were caught carrying it. Our focus will be to increase border patrols because that is the only way to plug hooch inflow. We have abandoned the demand for such facilities,” said a senior officer.
