Bilaspur. While giving its verdict today on the petitions filed by the accused arrested in the famous liquor scam, the High Court has dismissed all the 13 petitions. The High Court has also cancelled the earlier order of interim relief. The High Court has accepted that the FIR has been lodged by ED and ACB-EOW on the basis of evidence. Also read: Raipur News: A game of offerings or something else? There are 31 thousand 838 such cases in Raipur tehsil in which there is no need for transfer of name
FIR has been filed by ACB and EOW against former IAS Anil Tuteja, his son Yash Tuteja, Anwar Dhebar, Vidhu Gupta, Nidesh Purohit, Niranjan Das and AP Tripathi in connection with the liquor scam. All the accused had filed separate petitions in the High Court to quash the FIR filed against them. The High Court had reserved the decision after hearing all the parties on July 10, on which the decision has come today.
These petitions were heard by a bench of Chief Justice Ramesh Sinha and Justice Ravindra Agarwal in the High Court. Additional Advocate General Vivek Sharma argued on behalf of the state. Six petitions were filed in the High Court against the ED and seven against the EOW-ACB. In these petitions, the resumption of proceedings by the ED in the liquor scam case and the FIR filed by the EOW-ACB were challenged and a plea was made to dismiss them.
During the hearing of one of these petitions, the High Court had granted interim relief to Anil Tuteja, which has now been revoked. According to Additional Advocate General Vivek Sharma, Anwar Dhebar had used his influence in the Congress government to get AP Tripathi appointed as the MD of CSMCL. After this, a scam of Rs 2161 crore was committed through a syndicate of officials, businessmen and people with political influence.
The ED, which is investigating the liquor scam in Chhattisgarh, has lodged an FIR with the ACB. The FIR lodged talks about a scam of more than two thousand crore rupees. The ED has found in its investigation that the scam was carried out during the tenure of the then Bhupesh government through an illegal syndicate of IAS officer Anil Tuteja, MD of Excise Department AP Tripathi and businessman Anwar Dhebar. According to the ACB, from the year 2019 to 2022, illegal liquor was sold from government liquor shops by affixing duplicate holograms, due to which the government has suffered a loss of revenue worth crores.
While investigating the liquor scam, ED first arrested Anwar Dhebar in the first week of May. According to ED, Anwar Dhebar earned illegal money of Rs 2000 crore from liquor business from 2019 to 2022. He spent it in Dubai through his partner Vikas Agarwal. ED said that Anwar distributed money to his associates on percentage basis and gave the remaining amount to his political masters. After this, Excise Department officer AP Tripathi, businessman Trilok Dhillon, Nitesh Purohit, Arvind Singh were also arrested in this case.
During interrogation by Uttar Pradesh STF, Anwar Dhebar and AP Tripathi have told that the biggest beneficiaries of this scam were liquor manufacturing companies. Noida-based Vidhu’s company M/s Prism Holography Security Films Pvt Ltd had received the tender for making holograms. Duplicate holograms were made from it and sent to distilleries. From there, these holograms were pasted on illegal liquor.
ED and EOW have also accused the operators of the involved distilleries and their related people. However, no one has been arrested so far. After today’s decision of the High Court, it is expected that action can soon be taken against the liquor manufacturing companies in the fake hologram case.