Excise Department officials on Thursday conducted multiple raids in Sambalpur, Jharsuguda and Bargarh districts and seized spurious liquor worth Rs 12 lakh and arrested seven persons.
Based on inputs about duplicate foreign liquor being bottled in the Mudipada area in Sambalpur town, an excise team raided a factory and seized several bottles of duplicate foreign liquor bearing the name of reputed brands. They also recovered equipments used in packaging the liquor bottles.
A total of 74,989 duplicate crown corks of branded manufacturers, 84,233 Excise Adhesive Labels (EAL) and 7,500 corks were also found.
The Excise team carried out similar raids in Jharsuguda and Bargarh later to recover more duplicate liquor bottles and arrested five more persons.
While furthe raids are ongoing, the market value of the contraband seized so far would be around Rs 12.74 lakh, official sources said..