Daman was always a favourite haunt of tipplers from Gujarat and Maharashtra, the first because of the prohibition in force there and the second because of the 200 per cent excise duty on liquor. In a territory of less than one lakh people, there are thus nine distilleries and more than 400 bars.

But once a very genuine attraction for tourists, liquor -- or rather, duplicated liquor -- is fast turning into a bane for the tourism industry.

According to Assistant Commissioner of Excise G L Meena, the duplicating of popular Indian Made Foreign Liquor brands like McDowell's, Bagpiper, Director's Special etc was such a meticulous process, involving proper colouring, labelling and sealing, that it was almost beyond the tippler to detect the difference.

``There have been 210 cases of misbranding (as the excise authorities prefer to refer to duplicated liquor) in the past 18 months'', Meena informs Express Newsline. ``It is the Maachhis (local fishermen) who're behind the racket. Almost every Maachhis house in Daman has become a cottage industry, a bottling plant''.

It is the high returns that lure fishermen into the trade. A locally manufactured bottle of Peter Scot, for instance, can sell for Rs 300, 10 times the cost price. The produce makes its way into the neighbouring dry State as well as South India.

Perhaps one of the biggest coup for the Excise department came with the seizure of a huge quantity of duplicate liquor from the Silver Star Distillery, owned by a relative of the former Daman MP Gopal Tandel, in March 1997. Ever since the drive was launched, the authorities have seized a huge quantity of liquor, labels, caps, pads and a number of vehicles, including trucks, cars and boats, as well as Rs 1 crore as penalty.

If the assistant commissioner of excise is to be believed, the spurious liquor trade will soon be a thing of the past. ``The mafia has been completely wiped out'', claims Meena. ``We targeted the Maachhis in their houses; they shifted to the rural areas. When we cracked down on them there, they moved to Gujarat. We raided certain bottling plants there with the help of the State police''.

Two persons by the name of Keshav Tandel and Surya have also been arrested under the PASA Act, Meena adds, expressing hope that with the wiping out of the liquor mafia, the tourism industry would once again thrive in Daman.