The Kerala government should think of discontinuing toddy business in the State to save the poor from the evils of alcohol and to prevent camouflaged sale of arrack and spurious liquor in the name of toddy, the Kerala High Court said in Kochi on Thursday.
A Division Bench, comprising Justice C.N. Ramachandran Nair and Justice Bhabani Prasad Ray, said that as prohibition was a matter of government policy, the State government should take note of the views of the court and take a decision to be implemented at least from the next financial year.
The order came in a case related to renewal of Abkari licence under the Kerala Abkari Shops Disposal Rules, 2000.
The court hoped that the State government would take a “bold decision in the near future liberating Emerging Modern Kerala from the disgraceful business carried on everywhere on the roadside.”
Referring to the Abkari cases booked by the Police and the Excise departments and those pending for trial, the court said that spurious liquor was extensively sold under the label of toddy through toddy shops. “Why this toddy business should be continued in the State which has hardly any toddy production only to defeat the prohibition of arrack introduced in the State 16 years back,” the court asked.
20,547 abkari cases
As many as 20,547 abkari cases have been pending trial in various courts, and Kollam district came on top of the list with 6,400 cases followed by Thiruvananthapuram with 5,000.
“Trial in a large number of abkari cases ends up in acquittals on technicalities; witnesses, under threat, refusing to give evidence and the last-point seller, who is a nonentity in the abkari business, is the accused and the kingpins controlling the business do not figure in the cases or easily escape,” the order said.
The court observed that toddy tappers carrying toddy on shoulders was a story of the past in Kerala villages, and their next generation, without exception, would not take up the traditional profession. With few tappers and consequent unavailability of toddy, the government permitted sourcing and transport of the brew from faraway places. It could be implied that artificially prepared spurious liquor with a high alcohol content was sold in toddy shops, most of the cases booked being of this kind, the Division Bench said.
The court observed that the prohibition of arrack was “easily got over by sale of the same stuff by mixing it with toddy which itself is artificially prepared for want of adequate production of toddy in the State.”
The government was not in favour of closing down the toddy shops. The court said that one explanation offered by the Excise Commissioner justifying the business was that people should be provided liquor with a low percentage of alcohol.
