Ahmedabad cops' sniff test for booze notional in Covid age

AHMEDABAD: Cops are nosy when it comes to hunting down drunk people - the long sniff of the law has been traditionally used to detect those who break the prohibition rule.
But police, on the frontline of the war on Covid, realize by now that coronavirus spreads through respiratory droplets. So the sniff test, which always features in FIRs against people caught drunk, has been reduced to only a notional observance, dictated by the format.
Top police officials said that social distancing is necessary in the times of corona. They said that when cops write that they smelt the mouth of a person to ascertain sobriety, only a template is being followed and the cops are well away from the jaws of viral danger. The old-fashioned inhalation for the determination of intoxication reflects the paucity of modern devices with police, such as breath analyzers.
On Monday, a 29-year-old man was caught drunk by Satellite police personnel from his house in Rajivnagar. The FIR states, "We got a message from the control room at around 2pm on Monday that a person in an inebriated condition was fighting with his wife ." The FIR goes on to say: "We found a man creating a ruckus. We called two punch witnesses and later we and the punch witnesses smelt the man's mouth and ascertained that he was drunk."
Similarly, Vastrapur police on Sunday evening booked a 44-year-old man from Ranip in a drunk-driving case. Cops and two punch witnesses again apparently smelt the mouth of the accused, according to the FIR.
The FIR says, "The staff members (cops) and punch witnesses smelt the mouth and found that the man was heavily drunk."
An official of Satellite police said, "We have to follow a specific template to write the details in the FIR of a prohibition case." He went on to say: "Earlier, we used to go close to a person to determine whether he was drunk but after the corona outbreak, we maintain social distancing while booking a prohibition-case accused. We generally ask each other whether the person appears drunk and if a majority of us believe that he or she is drunk, we proceed with the booking."
"If we suspect that someone is drunk, we check his eyes and his gait," a police official said. "We stand about a metre away from the suspect, taking proper care to ensure he does not run away. We also ask his name and address and if a person is drunk, his speech will be slurred. When he speaks, a waft of alcohol breath might issue out. This is the exercise we follow these days." Another police official said, "It is much better that the practice of smelling the mouth remains only on paper. It is risky for the cops."
City police commissioner Ashish Bhatia said that the template could be changed. "I will check whether such a mention is made in the FIRs. No cop smells mouths these days," he said.