A Sunday picnic to the Juhu beach is incomplete without savouring the delights from an array of food stalls in Juhu Chowpatty. However, all the stalls by the beach remained shut on Sunday evening. The Santa Cruz police conducted a raid on Sunday afternoon and shut the shops citing irregularities.
Padmakar Chavan, senior PI of Santa Cruz police station, said, "Most of the stalls had been using gas cylinders which are not allowed by the beach. The stalls are only allowed to sell food which are already cooked. They cannot cook food there. We had issued warnings and notices before."
The police raided a few stalls and booked their owners under section 285 of the IPC (Negligent conduct with respect to fire or combustible matter). "We took away the gas cylinders of a few stalls. Since most of the stalls used cylinders, the owners themselves decided to shut them," added Chavan.
The stall owners, however, claimed that they had permission to use cylinders and that they had been doing business there for several years now. They attributed this move to the fact that the police were not getting any hafta (bribe) from them. Raju Sharma, a stall owner, said: "Two weeks ago, we had complained of a few stalls that were operating illegally on the premises. They were surviving as they were giving hafta to the local cops. Only after we approached the higher-ups, these shops were shut."
After this, the local police were not able to collect bribes as the other establishments were legal, Sharma added.
"We have permission to run these shops. Since the police are not benefiting, they decided to take this extreme step. All the 80 shops were shut. Our association will be lodging a formal complaint. We are unhappy that our business was affected on a Sunday evening," said another stall owner.
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