Excise officials, who had on January 2 raided a house where stills were running, were roughed up by the bootleggers, who had openly dropped name of “Kahlon sahib” while threatening them.

“Majority of the villagers in Sadhanwali village in Dera Baba Nanak are involved in making illicit liquor and there is no authority to check them due to direct political interference,” wrote an excise official in his complaint to the Excise and Taxation Commissioner A Venu Prasad last week after an attack on his raiding team.

However, Dera Baba Nanak SHO refused to register a case, as name of a senior politician figured in the episode, the official said.

Sources said a team, headed by Dera Baba Nanak excise inspector Hardeep Singh Randhawa, had raided an illegal unit in Sadhanwali village and destroyed some material and confiscated machines and other devices.

“When we were loading the material on our official vehicle, miscreants surrounded our team,” said Randhawa in his complaint to the Gurdaspur DC and the Excise and Taxation Commissioner. “The goons threatened us that ‘Kahlon Sahib’ has said that if any ‘excise official raids the place, he should be butchered to death’,” the complaint read.

While senior officials in the Gurdaspur administration were tightlipped over the issue, sources said Dera Baba Nanak SHO had even advised the raiding team not to submit any complaint. “The SHO said even if they arrest a person on charges of making illicit liquor, he would be left off after political meddling,” said Randhawa in the complaint, a copy of which is with The Indian Express.

Copies of the complaint were also despatched to SSPs of Gurdaspur and Batala.

However, Assistant Commissioner (Grievances), Gurdaspur, CS Mann said, “We are yet to receive the complaint. The matter is not in my notice.”