Click to play videoChennai: Is Chennai too conservative?
Those who think so might agree the city’s culture police are overdoing their duties. The police cracked down on a three-star pub 'Speed' at about 2310 hrs (IST) on Saturday for exceeding the closing time of 2300 hrs (IST) by 10 minutes.
But that's the police version. Those at the pub say the police told female customers it wasn't suitable for them to be exposed to smoke and alcohol.
They also allegedly slapped people who protested.
"There was one girl who raised her voice and said, ‘That's none of anybody's business. My parents know that I'm out and I'm okay with it.’ They immediately said 'Put her behind the bars' and they actually dragged her into a place and they just pushed her and she screamed and then they slapped her and made her shut her mouth,” says a customer who doesn’t wish to be identified.
It took at least a couple of hours of interrogation and verification for the pub-goers to get over with their nightmare, and that too only after the parents came in to testify.
“They were looking at the girls - and checking their bags- because they normally wear jackets when they come to the club and when they come, they take off their jackets and chill out. They looked at their bags and said ‘you're doing a cabaret dance or what’,” says an employee at ‘Speed’.
However, the police prefer to call it a routine crackdown. The pub might have exceeded the closing hour but wasn't this reaction a little too severe?
“May be the tempers were a bit high. The officers there were discharging their duty and so the hotel managers should have co-operated rather than create a scene,” says Joint Commissioner of Police (Central), Sandeeprai Rathore.
While police maintain that the crackdowns are regular affairs to ensure that the rules are being followed properly, most of city’s youth would rather call it a moral-policing overdrive.
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