Even though more than 13,000 people have so far been arrested for alleged violation of prohibition laws, the arrest of Chandradeep Kumar Sen is proving extremely difficult for Excise Department sleuths. Sen was arrested a few days ago and cartons of country liquor were seized from his house.
The Excise Sub-Inspector (SI) Deepak Kumar Singh had never imagined that he would be arrested for arresting one person. Singh has been arrested by the Nalanda police for arresting Sen. Sen is the ruling JD(U) president of Harnaut, the block Chief Minister Nitish Kumar belongs to. Sen’s wife Madhumita Devi was recently elected mukhiya of lohra panchayat. A couple of days back, the excise sleuths had arrested Sen after recovery of 168 bottles of country liquor from his residence.
All the seven excise sleuths headed by District Excise Superintendent Ram Babu had been detained by the Nalanda police a day earlier and top district officials including the DM and SP quizzed them about the “conspiracy” behind the arrest of Sen.
Nalanda SP Kumar Ashish said, “One Excise SI has been arrested for his involvement in a conspiracy to plant liquor at Sen’s house.” Sen’s arrest triggered protests in Harnaut and people came out to demonstrate in his favour.
The SP said that Excise SI Singh was in constant touch with one Samrendra Singh, who provided the tip-off to the Excise Department about liquor stored in Sen’s house. Nalanda DM Thiyagarajan SM ‘suspected’ that Sen was implicated by Samrendra whose wife lost to Sen’s wife in the panchayat election.
He also claimed that police recovered five empty bottles of liquor from Samrendra’s house. On his arrest Samrendra allegedly admitted hatching a conspiracy to implicate Sen.
BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi alleged that Nalanda DM and SP were acting like agents of JD(U) and protecting Sen from whose house seven cartons of liquor bottles were recovered.
Demanding a high-level probe by either the Chief Secretary or Director-General of Police he questioned the motive of Nalanda administration for detaining entire Excise Department team which had conducted the raids and arresting one SI.
Modi said under the law the identity of the informer has to be kept confidential but in this case not only his identity was revealed but he has been arrested and police forced him to admit that he with some excise personnel hatched a conspiracy to implicate JD(U) functionary. He said the excise team was detained at a police station for seven hours and were released only after the intervention of top excise official.