1.25 lakh litre ‘lahan’ seized in Tarn Taran’s Harike bird sanctuary Don’t dump ‘lahan’ in rivers: PPCB to police, excise dept
TARN TARAN : A joint team of the excise, forest, and police departments on Monday recovered 1.25 lakh litre lahan (raw material used to make illicit liquor) from the banks of the Sutlej in the Harike bird sanctuary in Tarn Taran district’s Patti subdivision.
Besides lahan, a yellow-coloured viscose, also a raw material for producing liquor, 10 drums and 26 tarpaulins were seized from near Marad village. This comes days after 121 people died after consuming spurious liquor in Tarn Taran, Gurdaspur and Amritsar districts. However, no arrest was made.
Tarn Taran excise and taxation officer (ETO) Manbir Singh Buttar said they had a tip-off that some people were producing illicit liquor on the river banks.
“The forest department’s boats were used to reach the area where the lahan was kept,” he said.
Besides registering a case under the Excise Act against unidentified persons, a case under the Forests Act, 1972, will also be registered as the area falls under the Harike bird sanctuary, he added.
“The bootleggers endangered the lives of various species. efforts were on to identify the accused. The team destroyed the lahan outside the sanctuary area,” he said.
PATIALA: The Punjab Pollution Control aboard (PPCB) has directed the police and state excise departments to immediately stop disposing of seized lahan (a raw material used for making liquor) directly in water bodies as it could have a shortterm impact on aquatic life.
With large recoveries of illicit liquor and lahan being made in the wake of the death of 121 people in Punjab’s worst-ever hooch tragedy, both the agencies have started disposing the seized material in an unscientific manner by throwing it in fresh water bodies and rivulets.
Last week, 2.5 lakh litre lahan was dumped in directly into the Sutlej in the Ludhiana district. The same thing happened along the Ghaggar in Patiala and Sangrur districts. PPCB member secretary Krunesh Garg said a pollutant like lahan cannot be disposed in a river.