Raid on hotel: City hoteliers discuss legal options

Sukhmeet Bhasin

Tribune News Service

Bathinda, December 10

The Hotel and Restaurant Association on Monday held a meeting at VRC Hotel in the city against the police raid at Handi Hotel and Bar a few days ago.

Hoteliers have decided to explore legal opinion in this incident and have also planned to meet the Union Tourism Minister to whom they would ‘expose’ the police for defaming the hotel industry in the city.

Punjab Hotel and Restaurant Association president Satish Arora said, “Today, we held a meeting in which we all condemned the police raid at Handi Hotel.”

He said, “If the police have to take action against the rooms given to unmarried couples, then the government should first stop the online portals, which are offering couple friendly bookings. At present, 80 per cent bookings are done online.”

Moreover, he said a case under the Excise Act had been registered, whereas no Excise Department official accompanied the police at the time of the raid. The police had no authority to check liquor, he added.

Arora said the police had taken legal action despite the fact that they showed the Supreme Court’s ruling and judgment on adultery, but they ignored.

He also claimed that they had till date failed to understand that on what ground the legal action had been taken as all documents, along with identify card photo copies of the customer, were shown to the police.

Members Neeraj Bajpai, Tarun Gupta, Sikander Goyal, Jatinder Rajawat, Ch Partap Singh, Bikranjeet Singh Bahia, Jaspal Singh, Mohan Chabra, Charanjit Singh, Jagdish Grover and others attended the meeting.

On December 8, the police raided a hotel-cum-restaurant on the Goniana road near lake number 3 in the afternoon.

The police had secret information that something ‘wrong’ was going on in the hotel. Acting on information, a police team raided the place. The police action continued till late in the evening.

The police had registered a case against the owner and two officials of Handi Restaurant under the Immoral Trafficking Act and Liquor Act for not adhering to the norms.

The SHO said they had recovered objectionable material from the hotel and were probing it. Only after the probe is over they would be able to say anything, he added.

SSP Dr Nanak Singh said, “Hoteliers have the right to contest, but we did what we had to as per the information we got.”