PANAJI
On Thursday, a total of 20 persons including hawkers and vendors were booked during a special drive undertaken by Calangute police to clear the movement for traffic and pedestrians in various public spaces in the tourist spot. The twenty persons were booked for illegal sale of goods such as music instruments and other articles while also creating obstruction to traffic and tourist pedestrians in the beach town of Calangute.
Calangute police inspector Jivba Dalvi informed that the majority of those arrested on Thursday are natives of Karnataka. “The special drive will continue in the coming days, and mainly this helps in spreading awareness among the people about this offence. The punishment is negligible but it is the fear of having a criminal record that acts as a deterrent among most,” he stated.
Calangute police have booked over 318 persons for the ‘offence of exposing goods for sale’ since December 2016. A similar ten-day drive was conducted in December last year whereby 167 persons were booked for illegal roadside hawking.
Most of those booked in December 2016 were small-time vendors with ice-cream carts and tea carts and were also booked under Section 34 (IV) of the Indian Police Act, 1861 which lists several offences on roads and empowers the police to take those, who the police officers consider as violating the law, into custody without a warrant.
