Police crack down after pub-goers fall to death

Following the recent censure by the high court about the polices’ casual approach towards the pubs in Indiranagar, all city pubs came on the police radar.

The court’s censure came when it heard a PIL filed by a group of residents’ welfare associations from Indiranagar, who highlighted various irregularities, especially the high level of noise over 100 pubs in East Bengaluru make late in the night.

During the hearing on June 20, the court pointed to the complacency by the police and the Karnataka State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) officials, who inspected the pubs in the early evenings instead of late in the night with their non-calibrated devices.

After the court pulled up the police, the newly appointed city top cop Alok Kumar made regulating pubs his top priority. He instructed his subordinates to carry out stringent night patrols to watch the pubs turning into dance bars and using high-decibel sound.

The city police booked several pubs playing loud music and those operating as dance bars with women bartenders dancing for drunken patrons.

The police recently raided Times Bar and Restaurant on Residency Road where 266 dancers were rescued.

The women were hired to dance during the birthday party of the notorious gangster Kunigal Giri. The Ashok Nagar police booked six cases against the bar owner.

On the first weekend since Kumar took charge as police commissioner, he was on night rounds with his team to monitor the pubs.

He initially visited the Church Street and headed to Indiranagar and Gandhinagar in the Majestic area to check the bars.

As he returned to Church Street in the midnight, two pub-goers accidentally plunged to death from the second floor of #BEiR pub close to Brigade Road.

Kumar and Additional Commissioner of Police (East Zone) Seemanth Kumar Singh were at the spot and arranged to shift the two to hospital.