Pubs under scanner: Two women arrested following brawl with officers over raid

Following a brawl over showcasing an ID card of an official, two women, originally based in Delhi, were arrested after they allegedly assaulted an undercover officer of the Mumbai crime branch who was part of a team carrying out a raid on the premises of an Andheri pub. The cops were intimated by their informers that the pub was serving hookah in no-smoking zones.

The women have been identified as Swati Harmilani(32) and Richa Kothari(31). They apparently demanded to see the ID card of a plainclothes officer, who had taken away a hookah placed on their table. A policewoman stepped in to explain that it was a raid after which the women got into an argument with her.

“The accused physically confronted our officer and stopped her from discharging her duty,” an officer from crime branch unit 9 reported to the Mumbai Mirror. He asserted that the raid on the pub, Kube in Andheri(West), was a result of specific information they received regarding hookahs being served outside the designated smoking zone.

An FIR was registered against them in the Amboli police station as they and the owner of the lounge, Zakir Desai(36) were taken to the police station. “A case under relevant sections of the IPC and the COTPA (Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products Act) was registered against the owner and the two women,” a police official informed.

The officials also added that the monitoring of nightclubs increased only after a Haryana-based businessman along with 11 others were arrested from a pub in the same Andheri vicinity after they fired a gun inside the premises last month. The Amboli police had recovered six guns from the accused at the time of the incident.

“After that incident, crime branch has been keeping an eye on the activities of pubs and night clubs in the city,”an official from the Mumbai crime branch added.

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