Catching illegal liquor was the police’s job, but we were the ones doing it. They only took bribes. We caught the liquor.
Thirty-eight-year-old Meena Patel and her gang of sakhis were accustomed to making headlines eight years ago. They were the vigilantes who stepped in where the cops failed. Fighting the police, netas and society at large, they took on the system that allowed liquor to flow freely in the villages of Gujarat. They raided the bootleggers’ dens first, and called the cops later.
Today, they wouldn’t feature in a footnote. The sale of illicit alcohol is as rampant as ever before, and the failure of prohibition continues to be Gujarat’s worst-kept secret. Here, news of deaths due to consumption of spurious liquor is the norm, not the exception.
In the run-up to the elections, The Quint visited the village of Vaheval in Surat to speak to these women vigilantes and ask, “What made you stop?”
Threats and Midnight Raids
In 2009, when the women of Vaheval formed a coalition to fight the sale of illegal liquor, Meena Patel was 30. In the face of extreme adversity, she led the sakhis and the raids on local dens of alcohol sale.
They called us on the landline and threatened to do bad things to our children if we didn’t stop the raids. My daughter was six years old and my son all of eighteen months. But we did not stop. We weren’t afraid.Meena Patel
Patel adds, “It was the bootleggers who were scared of us, more than they ever feared the police. They would tremble when they saw us.”
But to say that the sakhis had it easy would be a lie. “Women who joined us often got beaten up by their husbands for doing so,” Meena recalls.
She remembers how the police let them down as well, time and time again. “Once, we had caught a police official red-handed, taking a bribe from the owner of a liquor den. We complained to the higher-uppers in the police. You know what they did about it? Nothing.”
Her aide and fellow sakhi Ranjanben Patel chimes in, “There are villagers who bad-mouthed us by saying that the Congress had paid us Rs 50,000. Even though we didn't get or take any money from anybody, we had to face the brunt of these allegations.”
Even family members would tell us, “Why do you leave home and go raid liquor dens? Are you getting paid by the government for this?”Ranjanben Patel
Modus Operandi, Minus Mobiles
Back in the day, none of us had phones. We had to spread the word physically. Some women had tempos at home, they would get their tempos and we would go around the village, picking up our fellow sakhis. Then, we went to the dens. Often, our journeys began as late as midnight.Ranjanben Patel
“Raids as late as midnight?” I ask in surprise.
Meena laughs, “Yes, and on those nights, my father-in-law would cook dinner for the family.”
“We found bottles from the farms, buried underground, kept on rooftops, from wherever they were. If we caught hold of a lot of bottles, we would call the police and hand it over to them. If there were just a few, we would pour the liquor on the ground.”
Ranjanben recalls how the tipplers would react on seeing them “waste the alcohol.”
They would come and cup their hands, trying to catch a few drops of the liquor as it fell from the bottle!
“So your families were supportive?” I ask.
“Mostly, not always,” they reply. Ranjanben adds, “On the nights we didn’t have a tempo, my husband would drop me to the meeting point on his bike.”
And would he then stay for the raid as well?
“Haha, no. He’d come back home right after!”
The Death of the Sakhi Mandal
So why did they stop?
Nobody supported us.Ranjanben Patel
“We did it for one and a half years. But we did not get any support from the locals — not the men, not the sarpanch, nor the cops or the netas.” It’s been years since they stopped their raids, but Meena looks crestfallen as she discusses it even today.
There was a time when the den owners were so scared of us that they called us the ‘ladies police.’ When we stopped, everything went back to how it was before. Today, alcohol flows as freely as ever. You’ll find a liquor den every ten houses.Meena Patel
“And a young widow every two or three houses,” rues Ranjanben. “They have young kids to look after. Their husbands are no more — killed by the consumption of desi liquor. What do they do? There is a young man who lives nearby, in his 30s — he is half alive, perennially sick due to consuming desi liquor. And there are so many like him here.”
(Liquor) Business as Usual
Take a look at some of these headlines from the last couple of years.
“15 die after drinking hooch in Gujarat”
“Gujarat's three-year score: Spurious liquor killed 177”
“Gujarat: Spurious liquor claims 6 lives in Surat, two women arrested”
Deaths by drinking are not unusual, and country-made liquor its root cause.
As Meena’s daughter Manali tells us, “Our leaders boast that there is prohibition in Gujarat. But we are worse off than states which sell alcohol legally. Our problem is with desi liquor, which is infused with harmful chemicals and is terrible for the body.”
We don’t have a problem with foreign, branded alcohol. But desi liquor is made in the worst manner possible — by the river, near the drains. And it kills people.Manali Patel
Politicians, Police and Prohibition
The netas come for a couple of minutes and go. We tell them, “Stop illegal liquor sale.” They say, “Haan, haan” and leave. Then in their own rallies, they distribute liquor.Meena Patel
19-year-old Manali Patel has recently started college, but she knows enough about where you can find alcohol in the village. “Everyone does,” she says.
We ask her, “But that would mean the police and the netas know about it too?”
Manali laughs, “Of course. The police are the ones who know the most, it is their side income after all.”
From the police to the politicians, the sakhis have little faith left in the system. As Meena says:
Nashabandi chunavi mudda hai, par chunav ke baad mudda nahin hai. Prohibition is an issue only before the polls, never after them.
Video Editor: Purnendu Pritam
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