In a significant ruling, the Patna High Court has absolved Deepak Verma, a hand sanitiser vendor, from any involvement in the distressing hooch fatalities in Gaya. The court concluded that there was insufficient evidence tying him to illicit liquor activities, ultimately cancelling all criminal proceedings against him.
Patna: The Patna high court has exonerated a hand sanitiser seller who was charged with abetting hooch deaths reported four years ago in Amas block of Gaya district, ruling there was no material linking him to the manufacture of illicit liquor.A single bench of Justice Ansul, while allowing a criminal miscellaneous petition filed by Deepak Verma, quashed the entire criminal proceedings initiated against him in connection with a case registered at Amas police station on May 25, 2022. The judgment was delivered on April 21 and came into the public domain on Thursday evening.The case relates to an incident on May 24, 2022, when police received information that several persons from a village in Amas block had been admitted to a block hospital with suspected symptoms of consuming spurious liquor.
Two of them later died during treatment at Anugraha Narayan Medical College and Hospital.During the investigation, police conducted raids in a local market area and arrested two people allegedly involved in supplying spurious country liquor. They named another accused, who allegedly procured hand sanitiser for manufacturing illicit liquor. He, in turn, claimed he had sourced the sanitiser from a firm based in Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh, leading to Deepak’s arrest on May 29, 2022.
He was later granted bail by the high court on Sept 9, 2022.Deepak’s counsels A Aryan and Manogya Singh argued their client was not named in the FIR and had merely sold sanitiser through an online platform to a firm, without any knowledge or intent of its misuse. They said he ran a registered business under the name Work 18 MSME.The court held that in the absence of any evidence showing a direct link between the online sale of sanitiser and the manufacture or supply of illicit liquor, the petitioner could not be subjected to the “tribulations of criminal trial” under the state’s prohibition laws and the Indian Penal Code.
