Got Fooled by Wine Shop Owner, Ended Up Paying a 5K Fine and had all bottles taken away

Don’t carry alcohol in your car. When we went to a wine shop before leaving Goa, the owner started talking about this special permit. He told us that with this permit, we could carry up to 2 bottles of alcohol per person, and it would be accepted in Maharashtra. He assured us everything was fine and that we had nothing to worry about with the permit. We were a bit hesitant at first, but he was so convincing, and he even offered us a discount on the alcohol if we bought the permit through him (he charged 500 rs for it). He showed us other tourists buying the same permits which made it easy to believe him and said we looked like smart educated kids so will take the right decision - we finally went ahead and bought it. We had tried carrying 6 bottles on our ride back, and on the first check post the police confiscated 5 bottles out of 6 and allowed 1 bottle with us because they felt bad and took pity on us (not because we had permits - the permits were useless and invalid as they informed us). At the second check post, things went way weirder for us. My friend was already on edge after losing those 5 bottles, but the cops were just doing their usual checks. As they started questioning us, the senior officer seemed to notice that my friend was acting a bit sweaty and nervous. He actually unbuttoned my friend's shirt, saying, "You look like you’re struggling to breathe, let’s make you comfortable." I’m not kidding—he then gently cupped my friend’s cheeks in his hands, forcing him to look directly into his eyes sensing his fear. At this point, my friend, out of embarrassment and fear, blurted out, “We have just one bottle sir pls leave us” - and that's that - He patted his cheek and actually complimented him for being a good boy and honest about it and laughed. He wasn’t willing to let us off the hook now. We ended up getting slapped with a massive 12K fine for the alcohol we had, even though we tried to explain that we didn’t know it was an issue and had a permit and other bottles were already seized. After negotiating for a good while and exhausting all options we had, we managed to settle it for a 5K fine - paid and left for home. The wine shop owner completely made fools out of us by selling us a permit that doesn’t actually work in Maharashtra What he didn’t tell us was that the permit is essentially useless once you cross state borders, and we ended up paying a hefty price for trusting him.