By IANS,
Ahmedabad : Police in Gujarat remain clueless regarding the original supplier of the killer brew which has so far claimed 65 lives in the state during the past 72 hours, though a notorious bootlegger from the city, Harishankar Kahar alias Hari, was nabbed by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch late Wednesday night.
“We have nabbed the key suspect in the killer brew case and he is cooperating with the investigation. However, Kahar has not yet revealed anything about the original supplier of the killer brew, which remains a mystery,” a senior crime branch official said.
He said that Kahar was arrested from the Odhav locality of Ahmedabad and claimed that “raids conducted at his den last night have resulted in hundreds of litres of country liquor being seized which were stored in a number of containers. The forensic examination of the liquor would be conducted to ascertain if the killer brew was the same which has killed so many people from Odhav, Sagrapith, Amraiwadi and Majoor Gam in the city.”
The Gujarat government has asked officials in the tribal areas of the state to intensify their raids, especially in south Gujarat and districts bordering Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, to avert any further tragedy by identifying and closing all country liquor dens.
The state government has already announced setting up a four-member commission headed by a former Gujarat High Court judge to probe the tragedy. It is to submit its findings by Nov 30.
“The leads being provided by Kahar could prove useful to track the network of bootleggers in Gujarat,” the crime branch official said. “However, the scale of the tragedy in Ahmedabad will now make us look for dens which have been activated
after the Lok Sabha polls in the interior parts of the state.”
Meanwhile, government civil hospital sources in Ahmedabad said that there are still around 26 illicit liquor victims in the four major hospitals of the city. They are under observation.