Tipplers violate social distancing norms in Karnataka as liquor sales resume

Bengaluru: As anticipated, the liquor shops across Karnataka were bustling with customers from early morning on Monday, forcing the police in some places to resort to lathi charge for maintaining social distance.

In some places of Bengaluru, there were complaints that the wine shop owners were charging 10% more than the MRP, but no one tried making it official, as they were getting liquor after a gap of 40 days.

It is not that all the wine shops in Bengaluru were open, as it fell in the category of red zone. Only MRP shops as well as the outlets run by government owned MSIL were opened in Bengaluru.

The outlet owners begun working adhering to social distance norms from Saturday night itself. In some places, barricades were also set up to help the people follow a proper queue system. Blocks were drawn indicating the places where people could stand.

However, people started arriving at designated wine shops as early as 5.30 am and slowly the crowd started swelling. But opening of wine shops were delayed by almost 45 minutes in all places, as the Excise officials took inventory of stocks, while the police were ensuring social distancing norms were followed.

After sometime, those who were outside the barricade started forming crowds to get into the barricades. In Nandini layout of Bengaluru city, police tried hard and resorted to lathi-charge to bring the crowd under control. However, people, despite lathi charge, returned only to get beaten up again.

The situation was no different in other parts of Karnataka. Lathi charge was a common scenario in almost all the districts. In Athibele, Bengaluru rural district, only four designated outlets were allowed. The town, bordering Tamil Nadu witnessed unprecedented crowd. When the police resorted to lathi charge, people ran in all directions and some of them even jumped into nearby lake. In no time, they returned.

In many places, the blocks marked for people to stand had things like helmet, umbrella, bags and towels, indicating that the owners of those objects had reserved that place and would return to occupy the spot.