The State government will need to overcome the Centre's ban on the sale of legal liquor if it has to allow retail outlets and bars to open before May 3.
It is unlikely to appeal against the Centre's embargo on liquor retail before the national COVID-19 lockdown ends. For now, the government has put on hold the proposal to buy liquor from bars as takeaways and permit consumers to purchase alcohol from State-run outlets by ordering online.
With social distancing measures likely to be in place well beyond May 3, the government might also introduce limitations for the on-premise retail and consumption of alcohol. Officials say the non-availability of legal alcohol has spawned black markets and illicit supply chains centred around shuttered bar hotels.
On Sunday, law enforcers booked bar hotels in Thrissur, Ernakulam and Idukki for retailing liquor in bulk to black marketeers. In Idukki, they found bar management had sold a black marketeer hundreds of bottles after removing the seal of the Excise Commissioner to mask the provenance of the hoard.
The cases detected so far were just the tip of the ice-berg. Agents charged extortionate rates for liquor sourced slyly from bars. The Excise Department had not enumerated and sealed liquor stocks in bars after the announcement of the lockdown on March 21. It has now begun the process.
The emergence of domestically distilled hooch as a substitute for legal liquor is worrying enforcers. The distillation is done in jury-rigged stills inside homes, making detection difficult.
However, they say liquor deaths from consumption of home-distilled hooch were few and far between when compared to that caused by drinking spurious spirit. Officials say commercial level distillation of hooch has resurged in several localities, including Aryanad here.
There is also a corresponding increase in the demand for jaggery, sugar and yeast to make a fermented wash for distillation.
