Poor Kulbir Malik was arrested and sent to jail and released on bail in June last year. He ran from pillar to post meeting senior police officers pleading that he was innocent and framed in the case but no one listened to his plight.
He met Home Minister Anil Vij in mid of November and Vij took drastic action. He rang up DGP Parshant to send Panipat Police team to Ambala where the complainant was sitting with him and take him to Panipat in police protection and register the case against the liquor contractors. Anil Vij also spoke to Neha Yadav, Deputy Director of Enforcement Directorate, Chandigarh for probing the case from money laundering angle. Vij also spoke to Income tax authorities for taking action Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala did not pick up the phone.
Now, come to the sale and smuggling of liquor during the Covid-19 period. The SET had observed that in the neighbouring Punjab, recently, a huge quantity of unaccounted liquor had been detected in the premises of a distillery the owner of which also has a distillery in Haryana. Although CCTV cameras have been installed in all the distilleries, liquor manufacturing units and the wholesale licenced premises of L-1 and L-13, but shockingly no SOPs have been issued by the Excise Department regarding the CCTV, camera’s operations, monitoring and storage of feed thus leaving the scope of manipulation and tampering by the vend owners to facilitate in spiriting away liquor from the distillery without paying the excise duty.
The SET has observed that it cannot be ignored that smuggling of liquor from neighbouring states especially Punjab through Haryana and illegal sale of liquor had been taking place in the state especially during the lockdown period mainly because of the flaws in the functioning of the Excise Department, non-implementation of its own instructions, lack of monitoring and in some instances possible collusion or negligence on the part of some excise officials as well as police officials .
