NOIDA: A factory manufacturing “Miss India”, a brand of adulterated liquor that is suspected to be behind the deaths of six persons in Bulandshahr this January, was busted in Greater Noida’s Alpha 2 sector on Thursday night. Five persons, including the owner of a licenced liquor outlet, were arrested from the factory.
This is the third factory manufacturing and bottling the illicit liquor to have been busted in Greater Noida following the deaths. In January, two such factories were busted by the police following a tip-off from Bulandshahr. This time, it was a raid along with a team of the excise department from Meerut.
The Bulandshahr police probing the six deaths had said that spurious liquor was not only being bottled at the Greater Noida factories, but was also being manufactured there. The cops in Greater Noida had claimed that the liquor was only being packaged at the units.
Late on Thursday night, a joint team of excise department officials and cops from Beta II raided the factory in Alpha II sector. As many as 456 bottles and a half a drum of “Miss India” were found there. Other items used in the manufacturing of liquor, such adulterated colour, urea, wrappers and empty bottles, were also recovered.
The main accused was identified as Manoj Joshi, who owns a liquor shop in Surajpur’s Makoda village. Four others, including two workers at Manoj’s liquor shop, were arrested.
Rameshwar Kumar, the SHO of Beta 2 police station, said the accused would also bring country-made liquor from neighbouring Haryana and create four bottles from one after adulteration. “The liquor was being mixed in the house of one of the accused. They would paste wrappers saying ‘For Sale in UP’ to make the product look original,” he added.
Manoj, the police said, had been to jail 15 years ago in a case lodged under the Excise Act in Bijnour. After coming out of jail, he again started making illicit liquor in Greater Noida.
In the two searches that were conducted in January too, bottles of Miss India were recovered from the factories. “This is the same brand of liquor which was consumed by the six persons who died in Bulandshahr. The liquor brand was also found in the illegal factories in Kasna area that were searched earlier this year,” a police officer said.
