MUMBAI:The alleged kingpin of the maximum city’s worst ever hooch tragedy was arrested in Delhi on Tuesday. Mansur Latif Sheikh alias Atiq was nabbed from Seelampur area of East Delhi in a joint operation by the Mumbai and Delhi Police. City police spokesperson Dhananjay Kulkarni said that Sheikh was hiding in a friend’s house when Delhi Police nabbed him in a search operation based on specific inputs. The police suspect that Sheikh, in his late 20s, supplied the locally brewed liquor mixed with methanol.
Sheikh will be produced in a Delhi court on Wednesday and he will then be handed over to the city police on a transit remand. A Mumbai Police team has already reached Delhi seeking his custody.
A police official involved in the investigation has claimed that excess quantity methanol in the hooch caused the deaths. “Hooch sellers always contaminate the drink with methanol. This time, their calculation went wrong. They added more chemical than the usual making the hooch spurious,” he said.
Meanwhile, Additional Chief Secretary (Home) K P Bakshi, on Tuesday, asked all the Commissioners and Superintendents of Police to run a massive drive to unearth clandestine illicit liquor brewing spots.
“Such tragic events cannot take place without the connivance of local Excise and police officers. If you find the slightest evidence of connivance of police officers, take immediate action, which includes suspension of the officer, following the procedure laid down by the law however senior he/she might be,” Bakshi has stated in his order. Almost 150 people had fallen sick after consuming the spurious liquour sold in Lakshmi Nagar slum of Malwani area in Western suburb of Malad.