13,839 people have been arrested in Bihar since prohibition was announced, a record of sorts.
Highlights
- 13,839 people have been arrested since April -- a record of sorts
- 13,805 people were remanded in jail custody, 5,990 got bail
- Incidents of murder and robbery dropped by 21 and 18 per cent
More than 13,000 people have been jailed in Bihar over the last five months for violating the state's liquor law. On the other hand, crimes like murder and robbery, and even drunk driving, have seen a significant drop.
According to statistics issued by Bihar Police, compared to earlier years, the incidents of murder and robbery in the April-August period have dropped by 21 and 18 per cent. Incidents of drunken driving have reduced by 24 per cent and deaths due to rash driving in the same period saw a drop of 26 per cent.
On Thursday, the nodal department for enforcing prohibition in state said 13,839 people have been arrested since April -- a record of sorts. Of them 13,805 people were remanded in jail custody, 5,990 got bail.
The high number of arrests come without the aid of the new Excise law, which contains some controversial provisions like the arrest of all the adults in a household if liquor is found inside the house and no one will willing to take responsibility for it. While the bill has been passed by the state assembly, the Governor is yet to sign it.
The crackdown on liquor is proceeding apace, the excise department said, with the seizure of more than 90,000 litres of country liquor and 11,000 litres of foreign liquor.
But along with this, Excise Commissioner Aditya Kumar Das, had an alarming bit of information to impart: a parallel industry of bootlegging has come up which is pumping in huge quantities of country and foreign liquor into the state.