Worrying cases of kids forced to drink liquor

Worrying cases of kids forced to drink liquor

FPJ BureauUpdated: Saturday, June 01, 2019, 12:21 AM IST
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Chennai : Successive video clips showing kids in Tamil Nadu consuming liquor and chewing tobacco under instructions from adults have disturbed the collective conscience of many in a State where alcohol is sold by a Government-owned company.

Last week, volunteers of the Tamil Nadu People’s Forum for Tobacco Control were taken aback when they received a video clip on WhatsApp that showed a boy, barely aged two years, opening a tobacco packet and consuming it like an ace user. The kid is seen emptying the contents of the packet on his palm, rubbing it with his other palm, and taking a pinch of the tobacco with his thumb and index finger and happily placing it beneath his lower lips. An adult voice is heard egging him on his ”achievement”.

Even as authorities were trying to trace the kid and the unidentified adult who shot the video, another shocker video surfaced showing a three-year old boy being cheered by a group of youth to consume beer. In the video, the boy is seen holding a disposable plastic tumbler containing beer and a group of youth, all of them visible in the video, egging him to consume it. The boy takes a sip and indicates that he wants to stop because he did not like the taste. But the youth kept directing him to consume the beer and also taste fried groundnuts as a side dish.

However, in this case, as the video went viral, the police responded quickly and traced the accused, one of whom ironically was the boy’s maternal uncle. “We were able to trace the accused as in the video clip we spotted the registration number of a motorcycle that was parked on the scene. We were taken aback to know that the boy’s uncle was among those who fed the boy liquor,” said a police officer.  This incident happened in Tiruvannamalai, a district in north Tamil Nadu, three days ago.

Hardly had people recovered from this shock, when another video was circulated on WhatsApp and social media showing a boy, who appeared to be around five years old, being forced to gulp liquor by another gang. “From the audio records we suspect that the boy’s father too could have been around when he was asked to sip alcohol. In fact, in the audio one can even hear someone saying ”He is gulping it like his father”. But we have not found any major clues that could lead to the arrest of the accused,” said a senior police officer.

In the meantime, in Coimbatore, a class XII girl, who was wearing her uniform, was on Tuesday found loitering on the road in an inebriated condition. “The girl was riding pillion on a bike with a friend when she fell down. When passersby went to help her, she mouthed abuses at them. Later the police was called and we found that she had consumed liquor following a broken relationship with her boyfriend,” said a police officer.

Some months ago, a school boy in uniform was found lying sloshed in the middle of the road in Karur district in Central Tamil Nadu.

Following these incidents the call to the Government to give up its stakes in liquor trade and proclaim prohibition has grown louder.

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