Sarat Chandra Reddy alleged that after the raid the excise officials demanded a refund of ₹10,000 which they had sent to the chef to buy a bottle of alcohol to mix in ice cream and a bribe of ₹25,000 to drop the charges.
Published Sep 19, 2024 | 5:25 PM ⚊ Updated Sep 20, 2024 | 8:07 AM
Ariko Cafe and the owner.
In a new twist in the tale, the owner of Ariko Cafe in Hyderabad, Gattu Sarat Chandra Reddy, accused the Telangana excise department officials of framing him in a case on trumped-up charges because he refused to grease their palms.
On 5 September, in a sting operation, the Excise department officials raided Ariko Cafe in Jubilee Hills and seized 11.5 kg of ice cream allegedly laced with whiskey. The officials accused them of selling ice cream mixed with whiskey to its customers, including children.
On Thursday, 19 September, Sarat Chandra Reddy alleged in a video posted on X by broadcast journalist Krishnamurthy that after the raid the excise officials demanded a refund of ₹10,000 which they had sent to the chef to buy a bottle of alcohol to mix in ice cream and a bribe of ₹25,000 to drop the charges.
The chef may have consented to infuse alcohol into gelato exclusively for them at the central kitchen but the charge that the cafe was selling whiskey-laced ice cream that too to kids was a blatant lie intended to extract bribe from us, he said.
Sarat Chandra Reddy sought social media to expose how he was set up for a crime that he did not commit. He raised several questions in the video trying to blast a hole in the theory of the excise officials that he was selling ice cream laced with liquor to children.
In the video, he was seen saying that the authorities had involved children to sensationalise the case. “Help us shine a light on what really happened, uncover the facts and tell the actual story. Your support makes a lot of difference to us,” he said in an appeal through social media.
According to him, a day before the raid took place, his chef received a call from someone who claimed to be from the United States, repeatedly asking for “whiskey-infused gelato.” Reddy said the chef and another person who worked with him had in the past organised an event called alcohol ice-cream food tasting. Reddy, however, denied hosting any such parties at the cafe.
He said despite his team stating that the product they had asked for required a licensee, the individual insisted and convinced the chef to make a chocolate gelato as a special order. He then requested our chef to purchase alcohol for him, claiming he was too busy travelling and transferred ₹10,000 to the chef’s account.
Sarat Chandra Reddy wanted to know why the authorities had seized only one flavour of gelato if they charged that the cafe was mixing alcohol in all forms of gelato.
He also sought an answer to why the excise officials did not seal his cafe if he had committed the crime of selling the whiskey-laced ice cream to children. He wanted to know if there were any complaints from customers that he sold whiskey ice cream to their children. He questioned whether there was any laboratory test report to prove that the gelato sold at the cafe had an alcohol content in it.
He also wanted to know why one should sell alcohol-infused ice cream without letting the customer know anything about it.
“Why should the cafe mix expensive whiskey in an ice cream and sell it to its customers without them knowing anything about it? If the cafe was mixing alcohol, there should have been a huge stock of alcohol bottles in the kitchen or the cafe. But were they?” he asked.
“After the gelato was prepared, the customer said he was sending his driver to pick up the order. Soon after, a team of Excise officials raided our central kitchen, one km away from the cafe, falsely accusing us of selling alcohol-infused gelato to kids, he said.
(Edited by Muhammed Fazil)
