Excise Thunder From The Sky: Ganjam Takes The Biggest Hit As Odisha Hunts Illicit Liquor Dens| Special Report

Bhubaneswar: For years, Odisha's illicit liquor makers had one advantage that conventional enforcement struggled to overcome – the terrains.

Dense forests, hill slopes, riverbeds and tall agricultural crops provided natural cover for illegal distilleries. Lookouts could alert brewers to approaching enforcement teams, while furnaces and fermentation drums remained hidden deep inside forests or crop fields.

That advantage is now being challenged from the sky.

The Odisha Excise Department has turned drones into a key weapon of its 2026 zero-tolerance campaign, using aerial surveillance to locate hidden brewing units before ground teams move in.

And nowhere has the crackdown been more intense than Ganjam, where consecutive high-volume raids this week have destroyed more than 53,000 litres of fermented wash in just two days, besides seizing over 2,600 litres of country liquor.

The latest strike came on Wednesday, September 9, at Dampur, where a hidden liquor-making unit was detected inside a maize field.

Excise officials destroyed 19,000 litres of jaggery-mixed fermented wash and seized 1,100 litres of distilled country liquor. Heavy brewing equipment was also seized and three separate criminal cases were registered.

It followed an even bigger operation a day earlier.

On September 8, teams raided the Dahabada and Gujaling forests, dismantling multiple active manufacturing hearths located deep inside forest streams.

The operation destroyed 34,800 litres of fermented wash and resulted in the seizure of 1,510 litres of country liquor.

Taken together, the two Ganjam operations represent a striking 53,800-litre destruction of raw fermented wash in 48 hours.

The new weapon: the sky

The significance of the latest operations lies not merely in the quantity destroyed, but in how enforcement is increasingly reaching places that were once difficult to penetrate.

Drones can scan dense vegetation and large agricultural fields from above, identifying heat signatures, smoke and other signs associated with illegal brewing operations.

For liquor makers hiding beneath tree cover, the traditional advantage of remaining invisible from the ground is therefore being eroded.

The aerial systems can also help pinpoint the GPS coordinates of suspected manufacturing locations, allowing ground teams to move towards the exact target rather than conduct lengthy searches through difficult terrain.

The technology is particularly relevant in Ganjam, where illegal brewing units have historically exploited forest streams and remote terrain.

The department is also using aerial surveillance to look beyond forests.

A growing adaptation among bootleggers has been to move large fermentation operations into maize and sugarcane fields, where tall crops provide natural concealment. From the ground, large sections of such fields can remain virtually inaccessible to enforcement personnel.

From the air, however, unnatural clearings, storage drums, tarpaulin structures and other signs can become visible.

The drone network is further backed by satellite mapping and remote sensing, with suspicious geographical changes or temporary camps flagged for closer aerial inspection.

In effect, Odisha's enforcement strategy is moving from simply searching for illegal liquor dens to locating them through intelligence-led aerial surveillance.

Ganjam becomes the biggest battleground

The intensity of the campaign is particularly visible in Ganjam.

The district has dense forest pockets around areas such as Guruda, Khallikote and Jarada, along with hills and natural streams. These conditions provide both the water and concealment required for illicit brewing.

But geography is only part of the story.

Ganjam has also remained under heightened scrutiny following the Chikiti hooch tragedy, which triggered public outrage and intensified pressure for dismantling illegal manufacturing networks.

The result has been a sustained enforcement focus on the district.

During peak enforcement periods, joint teams in Ganjam are reported to destroy around 50,000–80,000 litres of jaggery-based fermented wash every month.

A major raid can also yield 1,000–2,000 bulk litres of ready-to-consume illicit distilled liquor, apart from the equipment used for manufacturing and transportation.

Earlier, on August 22, a multi-departmental operation in the Guruda, Ramachandrapur and Gangapur forest areas of Ganjam destroyed 13,200 litres of jaggery wash and 1,400 litres of adulterated liquor. A country-made firearm was also seized.

From forests to maize fields

But the crackdown is also revealing an important shift in the illicit liquor ecosystem.

As traditional forest locations become increasingly vulnerable to surveillance, brewers appear to be moving operations into commercial agricultural zones.

The September 9 Dampur raid is a striking example.

A maize field – seemingly an ordinary agricultural landscape – was being used to conceal a large-scale fermentation operation containing 19,000 litres of fermented wash.

This is precisely where aerial surveillance changes the enforcement equation.

The department is no longer dependent entirely on a patrol team physically stumbling upon a concealed furnace or receiving information about its precise location.

The objective is to detect the footprint of the operation first and send the enforcement team afterwards.

2026: Not the biggest year, but a different kind of crackdown

There is another important distinction in the numbers.

The current enforcement drive should not be described as Odisha's biggest-ever annual destruction of illicit liquor material.

That record, according to the historical data, belongs to 2022, when the Excise Department destroyed 2.01 crore litres of raw fermented jaggery wash and confiscated 19.7 lakh litres of distilled country liquor across the state.

What makes 2026 different is the frequency of concentrated, multi-thousand-litre raids.

The September 8 and 9 operations in Ganjam – involving 34,800 litres and 19,000 litres of fermented wash respectively – illustrate this new pattern.

The enforcement model is increasingly centred on targeted intelligence, drone mapping and executive-magistrate-supervised raids, producing fewer routine small recoveries but potentially much larger single-operation seizures.

The crackdown is widening beyond Ganjam

The Ganjam offensive is part of a wider statewide enforcement push.

On September 8, an excise operation in Salia Sahi, Bhubaneswar, uncovered a clandestine distillery hidden behind a false bedroom door inside a residential house.

On September 3, teams intercepted an organised smuggling network operating on the Bali Patna–Atagar route, allegedly using luxury vehicles with fake registration plates. Seven people were arrested and 5,000 litres of country liquor were seized, along with four high-end cars, motorcycles and firearms.

The message from these operations is increasingly difficult for illicit liquor networks to miss.

The enforcement machinery is not simply increasing the number of raids. It is trying to change how those raids are conducted.

Why the sky matters

For illicit liquor makers, the traditional equation was simple: hide the furnace, conceal the wash, post lookouts and exploit difficult terrain.

The new equation is different.

The forest may hide the distillery from the ground. The crop may hide it from a patrol team. But neither necessarily hides it from an aerial eye.

That is the real significance of Odisha's 2026 crackdown.

And Ganjam, with its forests, streams, agricultural fields and established illicit-liquor networks, has become the clearest testing ground for that strategy.

For the bootlegger, the biggest change may therefore not be another excise jeep arriving at the edge of a forest.

It may be the fact that the raid can now begin from hundreds of feet above the ground. 
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