In a relief to owners, the Bombay High Court has granted an interim stay on the police order posting constables in bars and restaurants here and in Thane district.
Since December 2013, two policemen have been posted, for over 12 hours a day, in each of the 36 bars in Thane and in over a dozen bars in Mumbai’s Chembur and Govandi areas. All these bars employed licensed women waitresses and singers. The police said the deployment was necessary to ensure that the waitresses were not made to work beyond permissible time and that no untoward incident took place in the bars.
But “we took strong exception to the police contention, and argued that the State’s stand was very derogatory. Today women work in all walks of life. To assume that there would be immoral activities because of the presence of women is wrong,” said advocate Veena Thadani, who represented the owners.
In the past, the court observed that by posting policemen for such long hours in bars, the department was wasting their talent.
