And quiet flows arrack

It was the State Excise Minister, T. Sivadasa Menon, who gave an on-the-spot direction to the District Collector Inderjit Singh and SP R. Sreerekha to conduct the raid. His order came on his first official visit to the district, after a prohibitionist group submitted a mass petition. Earlier, while talking to the mediapersons, the minister had expressed his unhappiness over the poor functioning of the monitoring committee set up to watch the flow of illicit liquor in the district.

The raid conducted by the collector and the SP–without the help of excise officials–opened a can of worms. A cash register, seized along with huge quantity of illicit liquor and cash, showed that politicians of all hues and the senior officials of law-enforcing agencies have been collecting large sums of money from the contractor in return of their help in carrying on arrack trade in a State where the production, sale and consumption of arrack are banned.

Two of the entries in the register showed that the contractor had paid monthly bribe of more than Rs 2 lakh to the excise officials. An Assistant Excise Commissioner, the district head of the department, several DySPs and Circle Inspectors, and Sub Inspectors down to the jeep drivers in the department figure on the monthly payment list. The list also contains the names of politicians ranging from Gandhian prohibitionists to a Naxal leaders.

A massive vigilance raid conducted simultaneously at the residences the 14 implicated officials on July 2 unearthed huge amounts of liquid cash, incriminating documents on an unauthorised land deal, records of huge investments and bank deposits beyond their known sources of income.

The Government, perturbed by the revelations, swung in to action and suspended a dozen senior excise and police officials in the district, including the Assistant Excise Commissioner, 5 DySPs and 5 Circle Inspectors.

Singh says what they discovered was just the tip of an iceberg. “Of the total six ranges in the district, we have raided just a single godown in a range. And when the reports came to light, many of my counterparts from other districts phoned me up and confessed the situations are similar in their jurisdiction too,” he said. When The Indian Express asked him why he stopped with a single raid, he said: “I am an obedient civil servant.”

Some trade union leaders and excise officials say that the same quantity of spirit which used to reach here before the imposition of the arrack ban in April 1996 continues to flow into the State. They say around 250-odd tanker lorries come through the Valayar checkpost on the Kerala-Tamil Nadu border everyday. Sources reveal that nearly 40 tanker lorries carrying spirit from Karnataka reach Pathanamthitta in alternate days.

The contractors, Surendran and his partners, whose godown was raided have immense political clout in the State. Political parties of all colours have reportedly enjoyed their magnanimity during the elections.

Small wonder, then, even after reports of the busting the liquor baron-police nexus, and the repeated threatening calls to the woman IPS officer, political leaders, social activists or prohibitionists have not reacted to the issue. Perhaps KPCC president Vayalar Ravi is the only politician who frankly spoke on the issue. He strongly justified politicians accepting money form businessmen for public cause. “I don’t find any harm in it. No political party has the moral right to question it. If anybody questions, I’ll call him a hypocrite,” he said. However, he said he was against the practice of officials accepting money from liquor barons to patronise their shady deals.

However, the liquor contractors in the State have a different story to tell. Some of them who admitted to selling arrack through their toddy outlets, squarely blamed the Government. They justified their action to make up for the steep hike of rates at the auction of toddy shops in the State.

“An indication of the sale of illicit arrack trade going on in the State is available from the huge increase in the auction rates this year,” says Mathai Zyriach, president district Abkari Contractors Association. For instance, the auction amount for toddy shops in a single range in Pathanmathitta went up from Rs 8.9 lakh last year to Rs 130 lakh this time. In the neighbouring Kollam district, 24 toddy shops in a range were auctioned this year for Rs 1.55 crore. The contract for these shops was given for Rs 5 lakh the previous year.

And everyone, the Government included, knows it is impossible to make even a quarter of the money spent on the auction by selling just toddy.

Toddy auction rates across the State show a steep hike after the arrack ban–so the phenomenon is not just limited to Pathanamthitta. So it seems is the contractor-politician-official nexus.