Lobby uses politicians to armtwist police

Liquor lobbies often unleash immense pressure on Karnataka’s enforcement machinery, especially in rural areas, to get away with their illegal businesses.

The lobbies use their political masters to armtwist the police against acting on tip-offs about the illegal sale of spurious liquor at provision stores and dhabas in villages and on highways.

Take Doddaballapura taluk, where the police says it is constantly under pressure not to act against the rampant sale of spurious liquor in 134 of the 154 villages in Madura, Sasalu and Belavangala. Although many of the villages’ small hotels, restaurants, provision stores, petty shops and dhabas sell this liquor illegally, the police finds it hard to crack down on them.

Says one police officer, “The taluk has over 65 bars and restaurants, besides wine shops. We have credible information that at least three cases of cheap liquor are dispatched to each of them on a regular basis. We have conducted raids on several provision stores, dhabas and even some houses and recovered liquor costing a mere '20 to 30 per packet. But after the raids we started getting calls from the local MLA’s office inviting us for ‘peace talks’. We later got to know that the MLA’s brother was an office-bearer of the Wine Merchants’ Association and the MLA himself has a stake in the bar and restaurant and wine shop businesses in the taluk.”

Even worse, the MLA and his men made veiled threats to the police officers who conducted the raids, he reveals.

“The threats came by way of talking about the officers’ transfers to their higher-ups and then negotiating with them to undo the damage,” the officer claims, saying that the policemen are caught between doing their duty and saving their jobs although they get at least a dozen calls from harried housewives worried about their husbands’ drinking habits and begging them to put an end to the sale of cheap liquor in the village.

“Villagers begin drinking as early as six in the morning and boys as young as 14 are becoming addicted to this liquor that is easily available,” rues a Karalapura villager, K.R. Lokesh, revealing that four to five people die every year in these villages due to health problems arising from consumption of the spurious liquor. “Even the rate of suicides has gone up in our villages after the entry of the liquor mafia,” he regrets.