Karwar: Excise Department staff and police jointly conducted a raid on Gabitwada, a village near Karwar, on Friday following the incident which took place on February 18 when the villagers obstructed the Excise staff from carrying out their duty.

More than 40 policemen and ten excise staff members, who arrived in two vans and six jeeps, surrounded Gabitwada in Karwar taluk and searched for the accused in a few houses. They conducted the search operation for around half an hour but no accused was found.

Background

On February 18, Excise Department officers received information that several boxes of Goan liquor had been illegally brought in a boat to the Gabitwada beach in Majali village from where they were being transported in a scooter. The Excise officers immediately rushed to the spot and found that two boxes of liquor from the boat had been kept in a scooter and another four boxes were being unloaded from the boat.

On noticing the Excise officers, the scooter driver went absconding. However, the man in the boat was taken into custody and the liquor boxes were loaded to the department vehicle. When the department staff was taking away the scooter, around 300 to 400 villagers surrounded the staff and disturbed and threatened them. The villagers took away the liquor boxes and managed to free the accused. They even snatched the mobile phone of Excise staff member Shivanand Koraddi who was making a video of the incident on his phone and destroyed it.

Subsequently, the Excise Department officers filed complaints against Shivanand and a few others from Ghotnebag for obstructing them in carrying out their duty. Cases had been registered against 27 people in Chittakula Police station limits in that regard.