ROURKELA: Of all places one could run a liquor bottling unit from, a school would be the last on the list. Not really. In Sundargarh district, excise officials on Sunday stumbled upon one operating from a private school. Two persons, including owner of the school Surendra Badaik and his bootlegger friend Pawan Kumar Mittal, were arrested in this connection.
The illegal liquor bottling unit was functioning from Saint Kabir Das Public School at Phuljhor in Nuagaon block within Bisra police limits of the district. The school is located in a remote place, close to Jharkhand border.
During interrogation, the 40-year-old Badaik said he was facing financial crunch due to the pandemic and had rented two rooms of the school for Rs 5,000 a month. His associate Mittal used to procure spurious liquor manufactured in adjacent Jharkhand and package it in the unit by pasting fake labels of popular Indian made foreign liquor brands at the school.
At least 1,248 bottles (936 litre) of spurious Indian made foreign liquor, a bottling machine, huge quantities of fake labels of different brands, caps, empty bottles and a car used to transport the booze were seized from the school. The seized items are valued at over Rs 10 lakh.
Rourkela excise superintendent Sheikh Asaf Ali said his team received information about the unit two days back and its exact location was ascertained on Saturday night. Basing on specific information, Ali’s team raided the school on Sunday morning.
Ali said spurious liquor from the unit was supplied to roadside eateries in and around Rourkela. Excise inspector Snehalata said the illegal liquor bottling unit was running from a small part of the school for the last two years.
The private school, affiliated to CBSE had witnessed a dip in student enrolment after the pandemic and at present, has less than a dozen students on its rolls. The school was established in 2017-18. It is not yet clear if the school has proper affiliation.