DEFEAT

It was a defeat of prohibition. 

The law in the state had to be changed. 

Enough lives had been lost and innumerable hooch tragedies had occurred. There was lawlessness all around. Prohibition had to be relaxed even more.

Yenkappa Muralidhar -- A businessman, a philanthropist, a politician. 

Was he truly that? 

There was another face behind this mask.

His true face. 

He was a bootlegger. He was a killer.

 

It was the 1960’s with Bombay in its true shine. The city was thriving with entrepreneurs and there was ample work for everyone.

The mills were booming and required manpower to work in the mills. The demand for textiles was at its peak.

Poor people from all over the state were migrating to Bombay in seek of ’rozi roti’

These thirsty mouths were yearning for alcohol. 

 

From 1949 to 1963 Maharashtra state had banned the manufacture, purchase, transport and consumption of alcohol due to the Bombay Prohibition Act of 1949 

Prohibition was a hindrance and an opportunity for those with a taste for liquor. At the end of the day, men of all walks of life wanted a drink.

Due to the demand, Illicit bootleggers were thriving. This was the moonshine industry.

 

Yenkappa had travelled to Maya Nagri Bombay from the coastal shores of Tamil Nadu 

Starting as a small-time crook seeing the profits to be made and the opportunity he got into the business of illicit alcohol.

There were ample lands in the suburb swamps of Dharavi and Antop Hill. 

Filling these swampy lands with truckloads of sand these land were reclaimed to form tiny reclamations for their hooch mixing and brewing.

 

Over a few years, Yenkappa soon progressed in this field and was a big-time player. To work out the illicit business he had to corrupt the system. A hierarchy in the business had formed and he was somewhere on the top.

He slowly started building friendship and bonds with police officials and greased their palms enough so that they would turn their head away from his illicit production and distribution network. Each official in this was bribed appropriately.

It started with the police and then this cancer spread to other departments like the anti-prohibition and excise teams. 

He had good control over the controllers.

 

The Modus Operandi was simple. Brewing was done in this unhygienic dirty open places and then the fermenting hooch was stored in barrels underground till they were ready for transportation.

There were specially trained daredevil drivers responsible for the distribution of this hooch in the city. A favourite method of transporting them was in tyre tubes packed with this brew. 

In case a stray police officer chased these drivers during the distribution they would just throw out the tyre tubes into canals and dumps along the route.

In certain instances where a close cat and mouse chase led to the police car almost catching up with the criminals, they would be rained with heavy tyres thrown at their cars leading to police car accidents and disruption to the chase.

Incidentally unknown to the police these tyres would also have been filled with hooch.

Some small-time bootleggers used a woman with hot water bottles filled with hooch stuffed under her garments, creating an unassuming bulge that could be mistaken for a baby. It has been shown many times as a funny scene on the Bollywood silver screen.

The government was breaking its head. They could not implement Prohibition fully so it was eased. 

In 1963 they lifted the ban on the manufacture and licenced production was allowed. However, these licences were scarce and there was hardly a good supply to quench the demanding market. Taxes on production and sales were high so the illicit market still thrived.

This system continued and Yenkappa and his tribe of illicit producers prospered. Demand was so high that he could not keep up production. All his illicit breweries were working overtime but the demand was sky-high.

 

There was a parallel economy now being fuelled by the illicit liquor trade. Gambling, prostitution and Bollywood were affected by its tentacles. Some tried interstate smuggling of cheap liquor.

 

Time flew. It was 1970.

Yenkappa had a different plan.

At present, he was using a combination of old fermented fruits and starchy vegetables to make his concoctions. These would all be processed into alcohol. The process was time-consuming as the chemistry involved took its own sweet time.

A very devilish idea crossed his mind.

He could fast track his brewing process by mixing in commercially produced industrial alcohol. The production time would be reduced as he would just need to do the proper mixing. The distribution could be instant and his profit margins would leap.

He would need to source out a supplier who would sell industrial alcohol to him in the black market.

Ideally, industrial alcohol is dangerous and not suitable for human consumption. Knowing this fully he went ahead and finalised a deal with an unscrupulous manufacturer.

A date was fixed for ten huge barrels of cheap methanol to be delivered to his swamp in Antop Hill. Yenkappa was personally there to receive it.

It was stored out in the open near the entrance of his fiefdom.

 

As it was a new process he took advice from the chemical supplier.  He was told by the unscrupulous chemical trader that one barrel of methanol mixed with two barrels of his regular ready brew and two barrels of water would suffice to make it saleable. 

He gauged it could cause illness sometimes but the small print that it could cause death was not readout.

He would now start the mixing process of the deadly brew.

The first batch was mixed and this mix was filled into the empty rubber tyre tubes. They were equally distributed onto two cars by the respective daredevil drivers.

The first driver zipped off and left for his area along with Yenkapoa in the maroon Hindustan Contessa. He was confident he would get there unsearched. This would be distributed and when consumed, unfortunately, would lead to around 20 deaths.

 

Back at Antop Hill a couple of hours after Yenkappa had left with the first killer batch the second driver lit a cigarette in his mouth while loading the loaded tyres into his black Ambassador. The 555 cigarettes drooped at an angle from one end of his lips as he puffed out from his mouth the white whirls of smoke from the other end.

Job done he got into his car and reversed towards the entrance. 

As he U-turned in reverse to now face the bulky car towards the muddy mushy road he took his smouldering cigarette and flicked it into the air in style. 

Providence made this lit cigarette land on the nine barrels of badly stored inflammable methanol.

There was an explosion and the whole set up went up in flames.  It was gutted in a few hours killing all present on the premises. The daredevil driver died immediately in his car which went up in flames with the killer hooch.

As Yenkappa had already left the premises he escaped death and escaped being held responsible for the deaths that occurred at his brewing ground and of the people who died after consuming hooch that was mixed with the alcohol-based industrial solvent.

He used his money and power to go scot-free.

He gave up his bootlegging and went onto greener pastures. 

He became a politician. 

Unfortunately, this was a defeat for Justice.

 

Prohibition was further relaxed in 1972,

In 1973, permits to consume country liquor became available to people over 21.

Sadly this was a defeat for Prohibition.