The Prohibition Enforcement Wing of the Tamil Nadu police has proposed to fund the education of the children of reformed bootleggers as part of the ongoing rehabilitation programme.
The State Government provides Rs. 5 crore per year towards rehabilitating habitual prohibition offenders and the PEW selects 1,800 beneficiaries each year who are provided with alternative income-generating means such as milch animals, petty shops, grocery stores etc.
“The objective is to ensure the habitual offenders do not get back to brewing of illicit arrack or smuggling of spurious liquor. A sum of Rs. 30,000 is earmarked to each beneficiary as rehabilitation fund. A majority of them have made optimum utilisation of the scheme...we closely follow up each case to prevent any misuse,” Additional Director-General of Police (Enforcement) C.K. Gandhirajan said.
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So far 5,000 prohibition offenders have been rehabilitated under the programme. “We have now decided to fund the education of children of the prohibition offenders by paying school fees, buying books, stationary etc. This will be an effective step in the rehabilitation process as the parent will only be happy to see children doing well in academics...this year also we have sent a list of 1,800 persons for the programme,” he said.
Dr. Gandhirajan said the government had sanctioned 16 new prohibition check-posts in districts bordering other States.
A total of 45 check-posts were now located across 13 districts to prevent smuggling of liquor, arrack and rectified spirit.
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Since January this year, spurious or other State liquor bottles and rectified spirit worth Rs. 10 crore were seized. 210 persons were detained under the Bootleggers Act. He appealed to the people to alert the PEW police by dialing the toll-free ‘10581’ in case they came across Market Retail Price (MRP) violations in the State-owned liquor outlets, sale/distribution of spurious liquor, brewing of illicit arrack etc.
The details of the informers would be kept confidential, the ADGP added.