Offenders may be arrested and contraband liquor and articles seized, without warrant

(1) Any Excise and Taxation Officer, any Police Officer not below the rank of Head Constable and any other person or class of persons duly empowered by the Government in this behalf may arrest without warrant any person found committing an offence punished under section 48, section 50 or section 50-A and may seize and detain any liquor, drug or other article which he has reason to believe to be liable to confiscation under this Act or any other such law and may detain and search any person upon whom, and any vessel, raft, boat, vehicle, animal, package, receptacle or covering in or upon which, he may have reasonable cause to suspect any such liquor or drug or other such article to be or to be concealed. (2) Any person other than an Excise and Taxation Officer lawfully arresting a person shall immediately take him along with liquor, drug, or other article so seized or detained before the nearest Inspector Excise and Taxation who shall at once take charge of the accused and the articles so seized or detained. The time taken in bringing the accused to the Inspector Excise and Taxation, shall not be included in the period of twenty-four hours prescribed by section 37. The Inspector Excise and Taxation on taking charge of the accused shall hold such enquiry as he may think necessary: Provided that the Deputy Commissioner may of his own motion or on the application of the accused transfer the case for enquiry to any other officer not below the rank of an Inspector under him and such officer shall be deemed to have arrested the accused and shall proceed in the aforesaid manner. (3) (i) Every Excise and Taxation Officer making an enquiry as aforesaid shall day by day enter his proceedings in the enquiry in a diary, setting forth the time at which the information reached him, the time at which he began and closed his enquiry, the place or places visited by him and a statement of the circumstances ascertained through his enquiry. (ii) Any criminal Court may send for such diaries of a case during the course of an enquiry or trial in such Court, and may use such diaries, not as evidence in the Court but to aid in such enquiry or trial. Neither the accused nor his agents shall be entitled to call for such diaries, nor shall he or they be entitled to see them merely because they are referred to by the Court, but if they are used by the Excise Officer who made them to refresh his memory, or if the Court uses them for the purpose of contradicting such Excise Officer, the provisions of the Evidence Act, contained in section 161, or section 145, as the case may be, shall apply. (4) The Government may by a general or special notification invest any police officer in-charge of a police station or attached to it, not below the rank of a sub-inspector with powers exercisable by an Excise Inspector under the Excise Act.