Chandigarh, May 15 -- A local court had in July 2024 acquitted all the accused in the much-hyped 2020 Rajpura illicit liquor factory case citing grave discrepancies in the investigation and failure of the prosecution to establish guilt beyond reasonable doubt.

The accused-Dipesh Grover, Karaj Singh, Gurpreet Singh, Gurdeep Singh, Manoj Kumar, Hardeep Singh alias Bachi, and Sachin-had been charged under multiple sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Punjab Excise Act for allegedly operating an illicit liquor bottling plant using smuggled Extra Neutral Alcohol (ENA) and using counterfeit labels.

Two FIRs were registered on December 8, 2020, under Sections 420, 465, 468, 471, 473, 120B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 6...