Bengaluru: Authorities seized illegal liquor worth Rs 83 lakh from Karnataka’s railway stations in May alone, a figure that surpassed the combined value of seizures made over the previous three financial years.Data from the Railway Protection Force (RPF) and the Karnataka excise dept show that liquor worth just Rs 13.8 lakh was seized across the state during the financial years 2023-24, 2024-25 and 2025-26 combined. The highest annual seizure during that period was Rs 7.5 lakh in 2023-24 across the South Western Railway zone.The spike this May was driven by two major busts. In the first case, authorities intercepted a parcel train arriving from Delhi and recovered liquor worth nearly Rs 60 lakh. A second seizure a week later pushed the total value of liquor seized during the month beyond Rs 83 lakh.Excise officials said most of the seized bottles belonged to premium and semi-premium categories. They suspect the sharp differences in excise duties between Karnataka and northern states such as Haryana and Punjab may be encouraging illegal transportation.“We have formed two teams to investigate this smuggling pattern. One team will probe the network operating within Bengaluru and Karnataka, while the other will trace links outside the state, including northern regions and transit routes used by the trains,” said Basavaraj R Somannavar, additional excise commissioner.Officials described May’s seizures as an exceptional case because of the scale and the use of parcel trains to transport liquor in bulk. In contrast, during the entire 2025-26 financial year, the Bengaluru division of the RPF seized foreign liquor worth only Rs 2.4 lakh.Typically, illegal liquor recovered at railway stations is found abandoned. During 2025-26, authorities seized 286.7 litres of liquor and registered 27 cases, but no arrests were made.“Most of the seized consignments are transported without tax invoices, primarily to evade taxes. When traffickers spot enforcement personnel, they often abandon the goods and flee,” said Shreyans Chinchawade, senior divisional security commissioner, Bengaluru RPF.He added that identifying offenders becomes difficult when the cartons are left unattended, although investigators sometimes rely on CCTV footage to trace suspects.According to RPF sources, railway stations such as KSR Bengaluru, Yesvantpur and SMVT Bengaluru regularly get liquor consignments from Goa. However, such cases generally involve small quantities carried by passengers.
