Bihar: Liquor mafia holds police, excise team hostage, 14 arrested
Darpan News Desk IANS, 06 Apr, 2023 11:22 AM
Patna, April 6 (IANS) At least 14 people have been arrested for holding hostage sleuths of district and excise department who had gone to raid liquor mafia in Bihar's Bagha police district.
The accused also misbehaved with female constables, an official said.
On Wednesday night, a team of district police and excise department went to Dharauli Dhangar Toli village and arrested a woman, Gayatri Devi, along with four liters of country-made liquor.
The sleuths have taken Gayatri in police van to go to the police station. However, the villagers attacked them and managed to release the accused. They also held hostage the entire team headed by inspector Prabhunath Singh.
When senior police officers received the information, they sent a heavy contingent of police force from Patkhauli outpost, Naurangia police station and Laukaria police station in the village and managed to rescue the team.
"We have registered an FIR against Gayatri Devi and other accused. Fourteen persons were arrested in this connection," said an officer of Laukaria police station.
Two Covid-19-related deaths have also been reported in the same time span. The positivity rate of the city has risen to 13.79 per cent. The number of active cases stands at 806 out of which 452 patients are being treated in home isolation.
Lakhimpur Kheri Chief Medical Officer (CMO), Santosh Gupta, said that one staff member was also found Covid-positive during a contact tracing exercise on Sunday after which the entire campus has been turned into a quarantine centre by the Health department. This is the highest number of new Covid cases reported in a district in a day this year.
During thorough search of the area on Monday, BSF troops recovered six packets, containing 6.27 kg heroin, inside a bag lying in the fields near the village. A motorcycle was also found nearby.
According to the police, a 67-year-old man had filed a complaint with the cyber police station in Shahdara district wherein he alleged that on March 18, he had received a WhatsApp video call from an unknown number in which a girl was performing some obscene act.
The accused -- 19-year-old Rohit Kumar and 26-year-old Kamal -- are residents of Sitapur. During interrogation, Rohit told police that the truck driver Harpinder, 60, originally from Faridkot district, tried to harass him sexually under the influence of alcohol.
XBB 1.16 was first found in January. However, while only two samples were found then, the number rose to 138 in February, and in March till date total 204 samples of this variant have been found through genome sequencing. The highest number of cases of this variant have been found in Maharashtra at 105, followed by Telangana 93, Karnataka 57 and Gujarat 54 as per the data.