'Bakery items' meant to be sent to Gujarat turn out to be liquor

Oficials of the local crime branch of the rural police on Saturday seized consignment of liquor pouches worth Rs 5 lakh that was being sent to Gujarat from Goa through the city under the guise of transportation of bakery products.

The police seized the pouches of whisky and vodka of a local brand from Goa from a transport company in Chakan and arrested a 25-year-old man.

Alco-haul: One of the liquor pouches seized

The police said the arrested suspect, Rahul Sambhaji Jadhav, a resident of Kondhawa, worked as a middleman in the city for the illegal transportation of liquor.

"We received a tip-off from the transport company in Chakan and the person who had called us told us that a big consignment of liquor was being transported under the pretext of transporting bakery products to Gujarat from their transport agency," Police Inspector Nitinkumar Gokave of local crime branch of the rural police said.

He said the liquor pouches were concealed in plastic bags and wrapped in the boxes meant for bakery products. He said the consignment was sent from Madgaon in Goa.

Gokave said such consignments used to come from Goa through a transport agency under the guise of transporting bakery products and Jadhav used to unload and forward these to Gujarat through some other transport agency, for which he used to get Rs 15,000 per consignment.

"During the interrogation, Jadhav confessed all and said that in the past he had worked as a middleman on six such occasions of liquor transportation," the officer said.

He said that the police were now investigating to determine who the dispatcher and the receiver were in Goa and Gujarat respectively.

Another police officer said that as elections were round the corner in Gujarat and there was a ban on liquor sale in that state, such illegal transportation of liquor from Goa to Gujarat was a matter of concern.u00a0