Bhopal: The Jabalpur Economic Offences Wing has register a case against excise officials for causing loss of Rs 3 crore to the state exchequer, investigation agency officials said.
The EOW SP Jabalpur Devendra Singh Rajpoot said FIR was registered in Bhopal on Tuesday and the Jabalpur unit is investigating the case. The FIR has registered case against assistant excise commissioner Satyanarayan Dubey and another official Vivek Upadhaya.
The irregularity was committed in 2018. The liquor is supplied to army through the regional army canteen department stores. The supply is made in eight districts including Jabalpur and also some of the districts in neighbouring Chhattisgarh.
To take liquor, the army has to take licence, which is renewed every year. The regional office applied for renewal on March 13, 2018. As per norms, licence was to be renewed before March 31, 2018.
However, the application for licence renewal was kept pending by excise department. It was finally renewed on May 31. In the process, army faced loss and so did the excise department. In Jabalpur, excise department incurred loss to the tune of Rs 90 lakh.
As the licence renewal was delayed, the buyers purchased liquor from open market and they paid more money to private liquor contractors. At army canteens, liquor is available at subsidise rates, which is less to compared to cost of liquor purchased from open market.
When the matter came to light, collector wrote a letter to excise department principal secretary. The inquiry was ordered by principal secretary and asked assistant excise officer to submit the report. The then collector also conducted the inquiry and forwarded the report to EOW. The report pointed out that assistant commissioner formed a nexus with local liquor contractors and gave the undue profit to them.
