Kingpin, two others held for 21 deaths

SURAT: The Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of

Gujarat

Police, which is now investigating last week's hooch deaths in Vareli and nearby areas of Surat district, on Friday arrested kingpin Ramu S

Yadav

and two others namely Manoj Verma and Kailash

Tiwari

for perpetrating the crime that has resulted in 19 deaths so far.

Initially, the case was registered at

Kadodara GIDC

police station and they arrested eight people on charges of murder. Kapodara police also arrested three persons for their role in hooch tragedy. Thus, the total number of arrests in hooch case has now gone up to 14.

Yadav, who is originally from Uttar Pradesh, lived in Kadodara. He used to make country liquor which was mixed with methanol. This concoction killed 19 people, including two in Surat city, when they consumed it. Verma and Tiwari, who also hail from Uttar Pradesh, used to supply methanol to Yadav which they used to bring to Bharuch from a private company located in Mumbai in tankers. Yadav used to buy 40 litres of methanol from the duo by paying them Rs2,000. Yadav then used to mix this methanol in his country liquor before selling it to bootleggers which he did it on August 18, August 24 and on September 04 also. Jitendra Chaudhary and his wife Padma alias Narmada Chaudhary and Rukmini Reddy, bootleggers from Parvat Patiya of Surat city, had also bought liquor from Yadav which they sold to some people and two died after drinking it.

Superintendent of police, ATS, Himanshu Shukla said, "There seems to be no involvement of any police personnel in this racket so far. The accused made this product knowingly well that it may kill people. We have booked them on murder charges and also under sections 65(A) of Gujarat Prohibition Act. A special public prosecutor would be appointed and chargesheet filed against the accused at the earliest."