Counterfeit Liquor: India’s Hidden Industry

IllIcIt trade ILLICCounterfeit liquor is no longer confined to hidden godowns or back-alley stills; it has embedded itself deep within India’s formal alcohol economy that feeds off aspirational demand, weak enforcement and a fragmented regulatory system. From state-run outlets to neighbourhood model shops, from scrap dealers to small packaging units, each link in the chain offers an entry point for adulteration. Charting those operations, NEERAJ Mahajan explains why stronger supply-chain safeguards and tougher enforcement are now imperative.

The scale becomes clear when you look at the raids carried out in 2025. In November, excise officials raided a Delhi State Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (DSIIDC) liquor vend in a Narelabased mall and allegedly found staff secretly refilling empty bottles of The Glenlivet, Black Dog, Chivas Regal, Johnnie Walker Gold Label and Hendrick’s with a blend of cheap liquor and water. When oversight is these weak, even staterun outlets can slip seamlessly into the parallel economy.

Around the same period, a raid on a licensed “model shop” in Rajapur market, Ghaziabad, exposed another assembly-line operation. Genuine bottles of Royal Stag, McDowell’s and Blender’s Pride were being topped up with illicit alcohol brought from Chandigarh and sealed with counterfeit caps. Officials reportedly seized 270 empty premium bottles, 149 refilled bottles and more than 800 fake caps; a complete mini-bottling unit operating behind the façade of a legitimate licence.

State-Specific Markings Exploited

Punjab saw a similar pattern between August and September this year, when excise teams uncovered a major refilling racket in Ludhiana. The raid produced 106 empty high-end bottles, 39 refilled bottles, bottling equipment, caps, funnels and a vehicle used for distribution.

Investigators said the operators were pouring low-cost IMFL (Indian-made foreign liquor) and country liquor into empty bottles of imported brands such as The Glenlivet, Chivas Regal and Johnnie Walker Gold Label. A follow-up raid revealed consignments labelled “For Sale in Chandigarh Only” being funnelled into Punjab, a reminder of how easily statespecific markings and cross-border loopholes are exploited.

Micro Distilleries Inside Homes

In Ahmedabad, police discovered several small “factories” hidden inside ordinary homes in areas like Fatehwadi and Chandlodia. One rented flat had been turned into a microdistillery: cheap alcohol mixed with chemicals, funnelled into bottles, capped with duplicates and packed into cartons with forged labels of foreign whisky, rum and vodka. These quiet residential units were effectively full-fledged illegal bottling plants operating in plain sight.

Further south in Vadodara, police caught a bootlegger who allegedly sourced low-grade, red-coloured spirit from Daman, diluted it, added flavouring essences and poured the mix into empty imported bottles bought from scrap dealers. Hundreds of empty foreign-brand bottles were recovered alongside jerrycans of coloured spirit and flavouring agents. The newly “blended” liquor was pushed into the market at attractive “discounts”, especially during the wedding season, when demand for premium labels spikes and scrutiny drops.

A Counterfeit Ecosystem

What ties these cases together is the ease with which counterfeiters obtain everything they need: empty bottles from bars and scrap dealers, fake caps and holograms from small manufacturing units, and a steady supply of cheap alcohol and chemicals. Once a network is in place, the same channels can be used to push far more dangerous brews into the market.

As these cases show, India’s counterfeit liquor problem is systemic, sophisticated and far more widespread than most consumers imagine. Without stronger supply-chain safeguards, tamper-evident packaging, real-time bottle verification and proactive inspections, the gap between what premium drinkers think they are buying and what they actually consume will only widen.

It is a serious wake up call for government agencies and consumers.