New Delhi, May 30: He handed the nation its first indigenous can of beer. Sanjay Jain of Rajasthan Breweries Limited (RBL) wooed Stroh’s, Kingfisher, Lowenbrau among several others and set up a spiffy brewery off Delhi-Jaipur highway. Today, he doesn’t have an address, his distributors have turned detectives and the police and courts waste a lot of paper tracking his cases.

There is a lot Sanjay Jain has to answer to his investors, employees and distributors (they paid upfront for consignments that never came) for. Like, how the travel bills of he and his family to USA and Israel, and farmhouses in Delhi and flats in Mumbai cropped up as business development expenses in the company account books. S K Lahiri, the company’s CEO between February 1995 to August 1996, says RBL did not pay provident fund to its over 100-odd employees amounting to nearly Rs 15 lakh. In fact, for a long time, the management didn’t open an EPF account but kept on deducting it from employees’ salary. Mismanagement and diversion of funds are the reasons why the brewery looks the way it is today. Near the 111 km milestone from Delhi, there is no RBL signboard. It’s been shut for two years now. There is nothing but rusted pipes, an empty warehouse and heaps of beer bottle caps bearing labels including Kingfisher, Derby, Bullet and Lowenbrau.
The main gate of the plant is locked and sealed by the Bank of Rajasthan which took possession of the assets last year. A section of the property has been sold off and the new owners have begun construction.