Owner of cafe arrested for serving alcohol and hookah illegally, 40 booked

Forty customers -- 25 men and 15 women -- were booked and a cafe owner arrested for alleged violation of lockdown norms after they were found to be revelling with alcohol and hookah at the food joint in West Delhi’s Paschim Vihar on Sunday night, police said.

The police arrested the owner of Crossroads Cafe, Tanmay Singhal, and booked him under non-bailable sections of the Excise Act, A Koan, deputy commissioner of police (outer district), said.

This is the second such raid at a cafe or restaurant in Paschim Vihar. The police had booked 31 customers at Playgue restaurant last Tuesday, barely a kilometre from the spot of the latest bust.

The DCP said Sunday’s raid was carried out after a police patrolling team heard loud noise at Crossroads Cafe and discovered the place.

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“When the policemen checked the place, they found it was a restaurant serving alcohol and hookah without authorisation. Serving alcohol in pubs and discos is currently banned, and restaurants are allowed to only seat customers with social distancing in place. Reinforcements were called in and the customers and the owner were caught,” said another senior investigator not authorised to speak to the media.

“The owner had let some of his regular customers know that they could get alcohol and hookah and party without any hassle. Those customers called their known ones and soon the place was crowded,” said the investigator.

Five bottles of whiskey, 25 beer bottles and 19 hookahs were recovered from the place, the officer said.

Calls and text messages to the phone number belonging to the cafe went unanswered.

Police said restaurants serving alcohol in Paschim Vihar were taking advantage of the desperation of people looking out for a place to party.

“Since these restaurants and cafes are located on the upper floors of buildings in markets, it made it easy for them to operate. They would disable the lifts of their floor so that customers reached the place though a back door without drawing much attention,” said the investigator.

The fancy lights would continue to be used but they would be masked in such a way that outsiders wouldn’t see them. The volume of music would be substantially lowered, the officer said.

In the latest case, the cafe was located on the second floor of a building. “The patrolling policemen noticed many youngsters visiting a single building and a heavy movement of vehicles around that spot. They checked the building to find alcohol being served illegally there,” the officer said.

But there were other business owners who would know of the alleged illegal operation and alert the police. “And that is what happened in the previous raid. One of the local residents had alerted us,” the officer said.