Your poison could turn potent this festive season

KOCHI: Be careful when you buy your favourite drink this festive season as huge quandities of the spurious stuff is expected to hit the market. Following intelligence warnings, the excise department has strengthened inspections in the city for duplicates of leading liquor brands. The demand for Indian made foreign liquor (IMFL), which climbs new heights every season, is expected to touch another peak during Onam.
"We have already formed special squads to collect samples from bars and toddy shops. On Wednesday, we collected 50 samples from various spots in the district. An alert has been issued to check for the distribution of spurious liquor," said excise deputy commissioner V Ajith Lal.
As per intelligence reports, quite a few rackets in Thiruvananthapuram and Palakkad are into making duplicates of leading liquor brands. "Operations of a few such rackets have been busted in Thiruvananthapuram and Palakkad. They will try to push the fake ones through bars in the city," officials said.
The low-end and middle segment bars are easy targets for rackets trying to push spurious and potentially dangerous brew into the market. "These bars attract a floating population who come to the city from faraway places for various reasons. Such customers can easily be duped compared to regular customers," officials said, adding that these rackets make liquor of all leading brands available in the market.
Usually, empty bottles of the original product are sourced to make duplicate ones and replicas that resemble original labels are printed from a hi-tech press. "We suspect the involvement of personnel in bars in pushing such liquor," officials added.
The Kerala Bar Hotels Association (KBHA), Ernakulam unit, president Jose Pradeep said that owners of bars would not indulge in such activities as it would affect their reputation.
"Nobody would risk their business for such extra money. There is the possibility of staff committing frauds. But we have installed surveillance cameras inside the bar and in the stock room. All activities are thoroughly monitored using CCTVs," he said. KBHA represents nearly 200 bar hotels in the district.