Close vigil: Police keep tabs on bar-cum-restaurants

The activities in some bar cum restaurants are under the scanner of Bidhannagar City Police.

Investigators are closely keeping tabs on the activities there, especially the people who frequent them regularly, what the activities of owners are and the people who frequently attend night parties there as well.

Although senior officers are tight-lipped about the background of such a probe, sources said that investigators are tracking some criminal gangs.

It should be recalled that Bidhannagar Commissionerate started to raid the illegal bar cum restaurants alongside VIP Road a couple of years ago. Some of those bar-cum-restaurants were shut down after the raids. Several dreaded criminals were booked from those places.

The police also unearthed a ‘blue film production unit’ from a hotel at Salt Lake, which is situated at a stone throwing distance from a bar cum restaurant. Later, the investigators revealed that the owner of the hotel was the financer of the blue film production. Further investigation revealed that the owner regularly met the directors, actors, and technical staff of the production in that nearby bar-cum-restaurant. He used to finalise financial deals with the production team there. Police also rescued bar dancers from some of the bar-cum-restaurants alongside VIP Road.

A police source said that criminals have been regularly meeting in those bar-cum-restaurants. The 

investigators preferred to follow their activities instead, arresting them from there.

“There is a benefit to closely watching those criminals. They have been bringing in new people every day. We may get the kingpin or the people whom we are looking for,” said the source.

Crime cases take place around different bars in Bidhannagar. The senior officers, however, said that police teams conduct time to time raids in the bars. “You can recall that the police arrested a bar cum hotel owners at Baguiati. He was arrested from his Salt Lake home for allegedly running a trafficking racket for the past several years. The activities of some bar-cum-hotels were suspicious,” said another source.

Meanwhile the sources said that investigators are looking for two dreaded criminals who allegedly killed their rivals in a shoot-out at Rajarhat. “Those criminals killed their rivals. They are real threat to civic society,” the source added.