Rampur: Nearly 200 persons including 80 women have been arrested for allegedly carrying out illegal distillation in over thousand raids carried out in the last six months here, officials said today.  

District Excise Officer Radhey Shyam Shukla said almost 120 men and 80 women have been nabbed from the forests situated along the banks of rivers, where the accused persons were detected carrying out illicit distillation.  

“Although the illicit business goes on in most of the areas falling under the jurisdiction of almost all the tehsils and police stations but the most vulnerable centers prevail in Dandia forests, rivers and nullahas adjacent to Uttarakhand state,” Shukla said.

The officer stated Dandia forest were safest for the manufacturers as there existed a river in between the main thoroughfares and the jungles where illicit liquor is manufactured.

“Whenever the excise department's teams tried to cross the river, the miscreants managed to disappear in the dense forest,” he said.

Now the department has been equipped with lady constables, thus making arrest of female miscreants too possible and every month the raiding parties nab about or over 10 ladies found involved in the illegal activities, Shukla said.

Ten thousand litres of illicit products have been seized from their possession along with equipments used in distillation, he said.