A routine tip-off turned into a blockbuster bust late last night when Sonbhadra police intercepted a commercial gas tanker in a village, uncovering a staggering 898 crates of illegal foreign liquor.

The haul—80,006.4 litres packed into 10,776 bottles, worth Rs 1.10 crore—exposed a slick smuggling racket hiding behind a façade of legitimate gas transport.

Additional Superintendent of Police (Naxal) Tribhuvan Nath Tripathi revealed the operation kicked into gear after an informer’s midnight alert.

“We acted fast, stopped the tanker, and hit the jackpot,” he said. Inside, police found the liquor stashed under cover of an Indian Oil Corporation invoice from Jalandhar, ostensibly bound for a gas service in Jhansi. But the driver, Jagmal Singh from Rajasthan’s Balotra district, spilled a different story: his real destination was Ranchi, Jharkhand.

Singh’s arrest marks a breakthrough in cracking down on interstate liquor trafficking, with the tanker’s gas papers now exposed as a sham.

“He thought he’d outsmart us with fake documents,” Tripathi noted, adding that the investigation is digging deeper to unmask the network behind this audacious ploy. As Sonbhadra reels from the revelation, this Rs 1.10 crore catch proves the stakes are high—and the law’s closing in.