NELLORE: The Special Enforcement Bureau (SEB) has busted a gang of eight, including two excise supervisors, that was smuggling liquor into Andhra Pradesh from Goa and selling them through local stores after replacing the bottle labels with the ones popular in the State.
During an operation carried out in Nellore on Tuesday, the SEB teams seized 17,808 liquor bottles. The bureau came to know about the racket during a decoy operation conducted in the city a day before.
The arrested persons were identified as Shaik Anwar, T Surendra, C Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy, Krishna Kanth, Suresh (supervisor, excise store at Ananthasagaram), Venkateswarlu (supervisor at excise store in Chilakalamarri), Pawan Kumar and Subba Reddy.
According to SP Ch Vijaya Rao, a team of SEB sleuths led by S Ravi Kumar and S Krishna Kishore Reddy carried out the decoy operation at Magunta layout in Nellore city on Monday after the agency seized duplicate liquor bottles from a car. After the interrogation of Anwar and Surendra, who were in the car, the SEB teams raided Bhaskar Reddy’s residence and a few liquor stores in the city.
They found that the gang was selling counterfeit liquor through the government stores with the help of supervisors Suresh and Venkateswarlu. The SP said the smuggling was being done in tankers. The police launched a manhunt to nab Yashwant and Michael, who supplied liquor to the gang.