PROHIBITION CARD
HOME DELIVERY
Liquor is readily available, provided you are willing to pay a price.
“It is delivered right at the doorstep by unsuspecting kids and women, who are paid ₹300-₹400 an assignment for the risk involved,” said a Patna-based man, a regular of the home-delivery facility.
In some towns, chemists take orders, but only from trusted clients. “Dawai milega (is the medicine available)?” is the code, which keeps changing to stay ahead of the authorities.
“First, the home address is confirmed. Then the delivery is made so that there is minimum risk and no trap. No stranger is entertained,” said another buyer, adding there is no bargaining.
Patna senior superintendent of police, Manu Maharaj, confirmed the use of couriers, mostly young boys from poor families. “We must have nabbed around 100 school and college-going students, who were found carrying liquor bottles in bags,” he said.
THOUSANDS ARRESTED
While more than 90,000 people have been arrested, police and excise officials continue to seize consignments coming from neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Haryana, and West Bengal.
“Nobody has data about how much liquor sneaks into the state. Anything that comes to our knowledge is acted upon,” said Subhani.
During a review on the first anniversary of the prohibition, the chief minister admitted that stopping the smuggling from other states was a challenge and asked officials to get tough.
Police acted against its own men to make prohibition a success. Twentythree policemen were sacked and 220 suspended for dereliction of duty, additional director general of police (headquarters) SK Singhal said.
The law is strict and punishment harsh but getting bail is not difficult.
Courts are overworked and taking on the additional load of prohibition cases is not easy.
“To tell you frankly, the law is non-implementable,” senior advocate Vinod Kanth said. Slapping all kinds of charges under the Indian Penal Code and the Excise Act for carrying a bottle or downing a few pegs was strange, he said.
According to a judicial officer, the government set up special courts in each
district for cases related to the liquor ban, but it isn’t effective. “They have to see regular trials as well as prohibition cases, which makes it difficult,” he said.
A senior police officer admitted that the rate of conviction was very poor as arresting people for possessing liquor was easy but proving it difficult.
Social analyst Shaibal Gupta says Kumar’s caste- and class-neutral agenda might help him politically but it was the social advantage of prohibition that was at the root of the ban.
Kumar says the poor who used to fritter away hard-earned money on liquor were now spending it on children’s education and family.
But the Rohtas tragedy is a rude reminder that Bihar is far from kicking the bottle.