The Uttar Pradesh Police nabbed 18 people, including two policemen, for their alleged involvement in smuggling liquor and other items into the state through the Bihar border late on Wednesday night.

A team of STF, led by the ADG Varanasi and DIG Azamgarh, conducted a raid at the Bharauli intersection located on the UP-Bihar border under the Narhi police station of the Ballia district and arrested the 18 accused on the spot, DIG Vaibhav Krishna said on Thursday.

Rs 37,500 cash has been recovered from the spot.

Nine policemen, including Narhi police station in-charge Pannelal, have been suspended following the incident while all the policemen of the post, including the in-charge of the Korantadih post, have also been suspended with a case registered against them.

The DIG said a challan has been issued against the 18 arrested persons.

Going by the sequel of the incident, on Wednesday night, the STF team under the leadership of ADG Varanasi Piyush Moradia took a major action at the Bharauli picket across the Ganga river bridge on the UP-Bihar border of the Narhi police station area.

The action was started after midnight on a complaint of illegal recovery from trucks laden with sand as well as vehicles carrying liquor and cattle at the border. The team took into custody three policemen and 17 others from the picket.

A large number of bikes, registers, and mobiles were also recovered from the spot. All the accused were kept at a nearby temple and interrogated throughout the night. On Thursday morning, the vehicle used for carrying prisoners was called from Ballia and the people caught from there were brought to Narhi police station.

The team’s action continued at the Narhi police station. Here the room of the station in-charge was sealed. Police station in-charge Pannelal was missing from the spot. After this, searches of the policemen’s barracks were also started.

In the morning, DIG Vaibhav Krishna and SP Devranjan Verma, along with the additional superintendent of police and CO also reached the spot.

Meanwhile, Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav reacted sharply to the incident on social media saying, “A new game is happening in Uttar Pradesh: Earlier it used to be ‘thief-police’ game and under BJP rule it is happening ‘police-police!”

“This is the expose of ‘zero tolerance’ against crime. #Don’t_want_BJP,” he wrote.