SEB seizes 17,808 bottles of Goa liquor

Nellore: Special Enforcement Bureau (SEB) officials seized 17,808 quarter-sized liquor bottles said to have been smuggled from Goa, at posh Magunta Layout and Mypadu near here on Monday and arrested eight persons from Nellore and Prakasam districts. They are looking for six other persons involved in the crime.

Two of the eight persons arrested were identified as supervisors of government liquor shops at Atmakur and Anantasagaram mandals.

SP Ch Vijaya Rao said on Tuesday that the accused were selling liquor bottles with fake labels. The accused were identified as Sk Anwar, T Surendra, Ch Vijayabhaskar Reddy, Krishnakant, Suresh, Venkateswarlu, Pawan Kumar and Subba Reddy. Suresh and Venkateswarlu are working as supervisors of government liquor shops at Anantasagaram and Chilakalamarri in Atmakuru.

SEB teams found some persons moving suspiciously in a car at Bank Colony on Monday morning and conducted checks and recovered liquor bottles. They took Anwar and Surendra into custody and collected information, on the basis of which they carried out searches at Apollo hospital area in the house of Chemmala Vijayabhaskar Reddy of Vinjamuru mandal where they seized some more stocks. They arrested Suresh, Subba Reddy and Venkateswarlu in the raid. Another suspect Srihari escaped from the scene.

Subsequently, the SEB personnel conducted raids in NTR Nagar based on information provided by Vijayabhaskar Reddy and recovered 260 bottles of liquor from Krishnakant. They arrested one Pawan Kumar at Turpupalem area in Mypadu and recovered some more stocks. Police said the accused were in contact with Michael and Yaswanth from Goa for securing stocks of liquor and smuggling it to Nellore in tar tankers.

They then would pack it locally using fake labels. People in Goa who helped in the smuggling are at large, said SP Vijaya Rao. SEB Nellore-1 inspector K P Kishore, and other team members participated in the raids. Police also seized a car used in the crime.