Boozers queue up before shops; social distancing goes for a toss

Hyderabad: It was as if boozers were waiting to hear the announcement from Telangana government! because as soon as the news of State lockdown was made public it spread like wildfire. They jumped into action and queued up before wine shops, throwing the norms of social distancing for a toss. At many wine shops in the City queues grew rapidly. As stocks vanished the sellers had to bring down the shutters. But nothing could've turned back the buyers as they waited patiently in queues for new stock. Also there were a few instances where those waiting lost patience and quarrelled with the shop-owners. In order to control the chaos, the City police had to deploy constables at wine shops. Two cops were seen at all wine shops controlling the crowd and easing the anger of desperately awaiting customers.

Ratan Kumar, a constable deployed at a wine shop near Warisguda said that, as the number of persons started growing to purchase liquor "we had to call in for more personnel because two weren't sufficient to control the huge crowd.

He added "at most wine shops two PCs are deployed and they arenot sufficient to manage the crowd. But at shops which fall under the category of sensitive areas we needed more cops as the crowd was going berserk over the waiting hours.Time and again they were trying to disrupt the atmosphere by indulging in abusive behaviour."

Another cop, Shekhar Reddy, deployed at Mirzalguda, noted, "We were instructed by higher officials that we should try to control the crowd and ease the growing anger of persons who came to purchase alcohol. But, we were also instructed that if any person was indulging in creating ruckus or disturbing the ongoing process then we were to detain the person. However, no such incident happened because the ones who tried to disturb the process were strictly warned of legal consequences and they had to keep quite."

Uday Kumar, a techie, stated, "It was really sad to see people queuing up for hours to purchase alcohol by leaving the norms of social distancing behind. Even, I went to purchase alcohol, but by looking at the queue management I had to come back. Even police officers deployed were not much bothered about the social distancing protocol because they just wanted that people should not create any ruckus. It was fine if people purchasing alcohol violated the norms of social distancing."