KENDRAPARA: Six women anti-liquor agitators were beaten up by the goons of a licensed foreign liquor shop at Olavar village under Rajkanika police limits for trying to ransack the shop on Sunday.
Sources said nearly 120 women under the banner of Jhansirani Mahila Sanghatan had reached the shop protesting sale of liquor and were trying to ransack it when a group of men attacked them. The accused also threw chili powder at the protestors.
“We were going to attack the foreign liquor shop after damaging another country liquor shop in our village when around 20 miscreants attacked us with sticks, injuring six women,” said Minati Mallick, an injured woman.
The activists had submitted a memorandum to the district Collector, the SP and the Excise officials on several occasions demanding that sale of liquor in the village and its nearby areas be stopped but it failed to elicit any response, said Parbati Mallick, a villager.
Closure of liquor shops near the highways came as a boon for liquor shop owners in rural areas and there has been a sudden spurt in the sale of liquor in villages and towns, said Manasi Das, an activist. There has been a two-fold rise in sale of alcohol after April 1, after the Supreme Court banned sale of liquor and opening of shops within 500 metres from the highways across the country, said a villager.
Police are investigating the case. All the accused will be arrested soon. No one has a right to attack licensed liquor shops, said SP Dayanidhi Gochayat.
In a similar protest in Malkangiri district, the women of a local organisation vandalised a shop on Saturday. After the demands of the association ‘Maa Ghara’ to ban sale of liquor in their area went unheard, angry women of the association barged into a liquor shop and destroyed hundreds of country alcohol packets at Lathiaguda on Saturday