Iboyaima Laithangbam
IMPHAL: Even as heavily armed policemen and other onlookers watched, women vendors in the city raided illegal drinking joints, ransacked and burned over 500 litres of country liquor at Punshi Keithel on Monday evening.
The police have not arrested the bootleggers.
They also did not disperse the angry women. Some of the women said that for a long time bootleggers had been selling illicit country liquor in the drinking joints which are mushrooming.
Men who get drunk at the joints saunter out and indulge in obscene acts in front of women, and talk in unrefined languages.
The women are often at the receiving end in drunken brawls. They said that some joints near the Polo ground had started selling Indian-made foreign liquor openly though Manipur is a “dry State.”
There are drinking joints in several houses in the two tribal colonies in the city.
The women vendors said that they would take their campaign to such outlets in other areas.