From bar to behind bars, coming next week

Love the high and the highway? Get off it. Beginning next week, traffic police will park themselves outside pubs and restaurants and arrest drunks trying to get behind the wheel. Subhendu Ray reports.

Love the high and the highway? Get off it. Beginning next week, traffic police will park themselves outside pubs and restaurants and arrest drunks trying to get behind the wheel.

HT Image

Police have identified 438 joints for the "From bar to behind bars" drive and will use mobile pickets to check drunk driving.

On an average, 170 lives are lost on Delhi roads every month and liquor is one of the main contributors. In the last one year, 2,000 people have been sent to jail for driving drunk.

"We will put cautionary posters at the pubs so that they create a psychological pressure on the drinkers and restrain them from driving," said Satyendra Garg, joint commissioner of police (traffic).

Watering holes in markets such as Connaught Place, Saket, Defence Colony and Khan Market are on the police radar.

Bar owners will be asked to help customers book cabs to drop them home or call family members to pick them up, said Garg.

But if someone consumes liquor beyond permissible limit (30 mg per 100 ml of blood) and insists on driving, the person will be booked right outside the bar, the officer said.

"This is a good move and will encourage people to drink sensibly. A sustained drive would also help reduce road accidents," said Pramod Joshi, general manager, Blues Cafe & Bar, Connaught Place.