In a recent order Delhi High Court has established that a person who is over 25 years can store 9 litres of hard liquor like vodka, whisky, gin and rum and 18 litres of wine, beer and flavoured alcoholic drinks.
Recently, Delhi High Court has quashed a case against a man who was storing 132 bottles of liquor at home which totaled for 107.2 litres of alcohol. The court pointed out that there were six members in the family over 25 years of age hence the permissible limit of alcohol would be 162 litres.
In 2020, Excise Department raided this man’s house and found out that he was storing 51.8 litres of rum, whisky, vodka, gin and 55.4 litres of beer and wine. The officers found a total of 132 bottles including both foreign and Indian brands from ground floor of his residence in Panchsheel Park. The excise department said that the man did not have license to store such huge quantity of liquor and the stock was behind permissible limit by government.
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The man was booked under Section 33 of Delhi Excise Act and an FIR was registered against the man. Justice Subramonium Prasad who was listening to the case found that man did not infringe any excise rules because he was living in a house of six adults over the age 25 and 4 kids.
High Court noted, “Flowing from Rule 20, as the joint household consists of six adults above 25 years of age, the permissible limit for possession of liquor at his house would be 54 litres of vodka, whisky, rum and gin and 108 litres of beer, wine and alcopop. Therefore, prima facie there is no violation of the Delhi Excise Act 2009 by the petitioner.”
Justice Prasad has also pointed out the fact that a person over age 25 can carry one litre of alcohol while entering Delhi from any state in India and two litres while entering from another country.
