BANGALORE: Nearly 175 people died in West Bengal Hooch tragedy earlier this month, while the families of these people suffered as a result. But the Karnataka State Excise Department has gone all out in 2011 and conducted a whopping 41,669 raids to ensure the incident does not find any similarity in the state.“Our extensive monitoring and raids are to ensure that Illegal Distilleries (ID) are completely eradicated in the state”, Arvind Jannu, State Excise Commissioner said. Sharing information with Express, he said that a total of 7,935 cases have been booked and 3,912 people were arrested across the state for ID related activities.“We seized 48,829 litres of Indian-Made Liquor (IML), over 30,072 litres of beer, Feni and toddy”, Jannu said, adding that 7,644 litres of spirit was also seized and valued at over Rs 2.31 crore.“There are three major reasons for the growth of the licit liquor industry. We have pursued and eliminated ID centres, checked inflow of spirits from Goa and have used effective enforcement to curb illicit liquor”, he said and added that, “Barring one or two sporadic deaths, there have not been many cases of ID related deaths in the state.” The commissioner also shared that there were 468 remaining ID centres in the state and 47 out of these were their major concern. “Only these 47 are of concern as they are known to commercially sell their products, while the others are just small labour camps for internal consumption”, Jannu informed. Adding that three districts in the state namely: Belgaum, Bijapur and Bagalkot, were the major centres for ID. Jannu also shared that there were about 11 districts and 84 taluks in the state which were completely free from ID.
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