The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Monday raided 14 locations linked to former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister and senior Congress leader Bhupesh Baghel and his son Chaitanya Baghel. The ED had in January arrested former minister and Congress leader Kawasi Lakhma in this case. Baghel has previously denied allegations related to the scam, labelling the ED’s actions as politically motivated. The alleged corruption began in 2019 and continued till 2022 in the excise department when the Congress party was in power in Chhatt isgarh. The probe revealed how a nexus between three distillery owners or distributors and a group of government officials caused around Rs 3,800-crore (out of books) loss to the government exchequer, according to a report by News18. Only the government-owned shops sell liquor in the state. According to excise department documents, accessed by News 18, the state has 672 such retail shops. These shops generate sale proceeds in cash amounting to Rs 28-32 crore per day on an average. However, the illegal liquor syndicates started selling unaccounted and unprocessed liquor across the state with the help of a businessman-politician-bureaucrat nexus. In January 2024, a month after the BJP came to power, an FIR named a total of 70 accused, including excise officials, politicians and others. In July 2023, the ED filed a prosecution complaint, naming key individuals. “So far, assets collectively worth Rs 205 crore have been attached,” the ED counsel in the liquor scam, Saurabh Kumar Pandey, told Indian Express.