300 held in Pune booze binge bust

In the fourth raid of its kind in recent times, the Pune rural police swooped down on Maya Lounge at Wagholi, 20 km from Pune, in the wee hours of Sunday and arrested nearly 300 persons, including 110 girls, for going on a booze binge. While police confirmed having arrested four organisers for putting up the “illegal” get together, the party-goers, which included Iran nationals, Mumbai-based professionals, IT professionals working in the multinational companies, cried foul at what they claimed to be an case of archaic “moral policing”.

Spread over a half-acre area, Maya Lounge is owned by the wife of an assistant police inspector attached to the Maharashrtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS), who is also one of the investigators in the recent low-intensity serial blasts on the Jangli Maharaj Road. Additional superintendent of police Vijay Magar said appropriate action will be taken against the owner after the probe.

Following a tip-off on Saturday night, local crime branch sleuths carried out the raid on Maya Lounge at 1.30am. An officalsaid at the time of the raid most of the attendees were gyrating to loud music on the dance floor while some of them were sitting in compromising positions. “The music was loud, while the hotel staff was serving liquor table-to-table. As we stepped inside, one of the girls screamed ‘police’, and everybody began running outside the hotel, but we restricted them. The police stopped the music, even as the inebriated partying youth, unable to understand what is going on, insisted that we let the music play,” he added. Foreign liquor bottles worth Rs9.86 lakh were seized.

The advertisement about the get together being aired on a city-based radio station since a couple of days invited couples at an entry fee of Rs1,000 payable at the venue itself. Identified as Harjit Sahani, Abdul Abbas Jalil, Saud Anwari and Shreyas Tanna, the four organisers were booked under sections of the Bombay Police Act. The police summoned a team of 20 doctors from the Sassoon Hospital for examining those arrested. The medical examination was over at 3 pm. One of the revelers told DNA that the police had infringed on their “right to fun as all of us were adults and could take the responsibility for our action”. “What is the need for this? he asked.