Get Talli gets into trouble: MBA, engineer held for selling liquor online
Selling clothes and jewellery online is a booming business these days, but two young men — one of whom is an MBA and the other an engineer — took the idea too far and were arrested on Sunday for online selling, and even offering home delivery of liquor.
Selling clothes and jewellery online is a booming business these days, but two young men — one of whom is an MBA and the other an engineer — took the idea too far and were arrested on Sunday for online selling, and even offering home delivery of liquor.
The UT police crime branch have booked them for smuggling of liquor. Officials with the crime branch claimed that the duo had made a website gettali.com to sell their ware.
Anurag Awasthi (31), a resident of Mansa Devi Complex, an MBA and an employee of S2 Infotech Pvt Ltd, New Delhi, and Pratham Gupta (25), a BTech working as a techincal analyst with Infosys at IT Park, Chandigarh, offered home delivery — at additional charges between Rs 20 and Rs 100 — of imported whiskies and liquor within 20 minutes.
On orders above Rs 500, no delivery charges were applicable. Awasthi is working on the project of e-courts at Sector 43 district courts. The police have also recovered a Polo car used to supply liquor in Chandigarh and Panchkula.
Deputy commissioner Ajit Balaji Joshi, who is also the excise and taxation commissioner, said, “No permit was issued for online sale. We had also received the complaint. Our team was with the crime branch officials when the accused were nabbed.”
How were they nabbed
The crime branch officials had a tip-off that online liquor was being sold through a website.
The police arranged a decoy customer and gave an order of 30 liquor bottles, including imported wine.
The police recovered three Chivas Regal bottles, one Bombay Sapphire bottle, one Barleys bottle, one Belvedere Vodka bottle, one Camino Tequila bottle, one Jack Daniel bottle, one Drambuie liqueur and 21 bottles of Black and White Whisky from their possession when the order was delivered. The police booked them under Sections 120 (criminal conspiracy) and 420 (cheating) of the IPC, along with Section 61-1-14 of the Excise Act.
‘It’s crime under excise dept rules’
“The excise department has claimed that liquor vends in Chandigarh for 2016-17 have been allotted and had fetched a licence fee of around Rs 200 crore had been collected. Through this online sale, the accused had set up a virtual vend and caused revenue loss to the department,” said a crime branch official.