Staff Reporter
DIMAPUR, MAY 26
Large scale pilferage of IMFL and assorted liquor by department officials, involving its “big shots”, is allegedly plaguing the State Excise department. In a damming statement provided by Against Corruption and Unabated Taxation (ACAUT) on Monday, the State Excise has been accused of “diverting huge quantity (of IMFL) into the black market”, which runs in terms of “tens of lakhs” of rupees.
According to ACAUT members, they have been at the receiving end of numerous “public complaints” alleging the State Excise department of not “totally destroying” the seized liquor during their periodical destruction exercise.
On Monday morning, ACAUT members consisting of co-chairperson Joel Nillo Kath, RTI Cell convener Dr Khekukha Meru, Finance Convener Hokivi Chishi, Grievances Cell convener Hetoi Chishi among others, paid an unannounced visit to a destruction exercise of the Dimapur district Excise cell, to ascertain the veracity of the public complaints.
Their visit has unearthed a potential wide-scale scam within the state Excise, which one of the ACAUT members called as “blatant corruption, as far as the ACAUT is concerned.” “ACAUT Nagaland team on reaching the premises found discrepancies in the number of bottles/cases brought from Excise Malkhana/godown. DUCCCF Vice-President asked the Excise officials to stop the process. Regardless of the opinion rendered, the officials went ahead with the destruction. The Commissioner of Excise broke the first bottle. This was a deliberate ploy to destroy any evidences of discrepancies,” a statement from the ACAUT media cell read.
The ACAUT members had earlier in the morning produced to newsmen an official order released by the Commissioner of Excise, sanctioning the destruction of 85,064 bottles/cans of assorted IMFL to be carried on May 26.
“Total cases of IMFL/beer in the category of 750ml (IMFL), 180ml (IMFL), 375ml (IMFL), 650ml (beer) and 500ml (beer) to be destroyed was 85,064 bottles/cans (as per the Excise Commissioner order) or 4448 cases. However, the actual number of cases destroyed was 2394 cases or in other words 2054 cases of IMFL/beer were missing. “Therefore, the actual quantity destroyed was only 53.82%. The counting was done by ACAUT members in the presence of independent media represented by DD (Doordarshan) and local media houses and Excise officials. If the count is by the number of bottles destroyed the percentage of cases destroyed given could be much lower since some of the cases had missing bottles of IMFL and beer,” the statement said.
It wondered as to how 2054 bottles of liquor could simply “vanish into thin air.” The possibility of such pilferage happening for a long time cannot be discounted since this is probably the first time that anyone actually bothered to count the bottles, it added.
“The ACAUT Nagaland demands that the Government of Nagaland make a thorough enquiry into this matter. However, the government should refrain from making scapegoats of lower rank officials since it is clear that department big shots are involved in this mockery too and all guilty officials irrespective of rank should be booked and punished,” it cautioned.
The ACAUT members, in the morning, had counted “every cases of IMFL/Beer that was unloaded from 4 vehicles. The vehicles made 7 trips from the Excise Malkhana to the Commissioner office.” They provided the details of the number of cases unloaded from each truck from the seven trips.
They maintained that the ACAUT would not simply leave the matter at it. “We will dig deeper,” one of its members said.
The Commissioner of Excise, Maongwati Aier on Monday took strong exceptions to the act of ‘a group of NGOs” coming to the Excise’s destruction exercise and conducting a check “without any prior approval” on government property.
Talking to newsmen inside his office chamber, Aier said that situation could have taken a turn for the worse had the State Excise reacted to this act of unlawful intrusion by the “group of NGOs.” But we are all Nagas, so decided to leave it at that, he said.
“It’s not their duty to count. These are government properties and we were acting under the directions of the court of law. They did not take any prior permission to conduct the check,” Aier said.
He said that if the NGOs had any misgivings or suspicions about the conduct of the destruction exercise, they should have approached the destruction committee, formed to supervise the process of destroying the seized consignments.
An order from the office of the Commissioner of Excise had chosen five members, including the Deputy Commissioner of Excise (HQ), SP Excise Dimapur and representatives of Dimapur district administration, Dimapur police, “Town Committee Dimapur and a “representative from NGO Dimapur” as board members.
“This is completely un-procedural. Instead of appealing the committee they just came here and started counting the bottles. What they are doing is wrong because there are certain procedures,” he said.
Aier maintained that the Excise department was simply carrying out the court order to destroy the consignment of liquor. “Of course, if there are any differences (between the official figures and that of ACAUT) we will sort if out. We don’t have any problem with that,” he said, but was firm in his view that the misgiving was with the “un-procedural” action of ACAUT. Meanwhile, Dimapur District Excise Cell officials claimed that the number of bottles destroyed on Monday had tallied with the figure projected by ACAUT. An official claimed that only after the confirmation that the figures were in consonance, the process of destroying the consignment was carried out.
