Bootlegging is a booming business in Pakistan

Just another sale for a local bootlegger in neighbourhood in the heart of Islamabad.

Even though the sale of liquor is banned in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan,there is no stopping the sales though the length and breadth of the country.

Bootleggers operate from homes in posh localities and their neighbours too never seem to mind the transactions.

The sales peak during weekends,when it is not unusual to spot women driving up to buy liquor and crates of beer.

Bootleggers,more often than not,hail from the majority Muslim community.

“Saare Kalma-padhne waale Musalmaan hain they are all practicing Muslims,” a taxi driver said.

Pakistan was officially declared “dry” in 1977.

Under the law,alcohol can’t be drunk by 97 per cent of the country’s population.

The lone brewery in the country,Murree Brewery,caters to the remaining three per cent,comprising Christians,Hindus and Parsis.

Besides bootleggers,some of the well-heeled depend on friends in the diplomatic circuit.

The late Minoo Bhandara,whose family owns and operates the Murree Brewery,once remarked,”I think 99 per cent of my customers are Muslims. Just not very openly of course.”

Liquor is even served at some Muslim weddings,unlike India.

“We only serve liquor at weddings,” revealed a middle-class Muslim Punjabi who works in the IT sector.

According to Nadeem F Paracha,a senior columnist,before a ban on the public sale of alcohol was imposed in Pakistan in April 1977,various foreign whisky and beer brands were available in bars,liquor shops and clubs in the main urban areas.

“Murree Brewery started to advertise its beer in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hoardings and billboards carrying images of Murree Beer went up,mostly in Karachi,with the biggest being a neon sign put on top of a six-storied building in Karachi’s Lucky Star area,” Paracha wrote.

“This sign was also stoned and damaged by a passing procession of the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami supporters during the 1970 election campaign,” he noted adding,”Ever since the ban on alcohol,liquor smugglers and dealers have been turning a profit with contraband alcohol.

Trucks bring vodka in from China across the mountains along the countrys northern border,while ships unload cargos of beer and Scotch whiskey from Europe on its southern coast.”

Several alcohol detox centres being run in the country’s main cities are proof of the presence of alcoholics.

One such centre is WillingWays,which regularly places advertisements in newspapers and magazines and has a 24-hour helpline.

“Act now. We have a step by step plan for his recovery.

Don’t suffer in silence. You have waited too long for a miracle,” the advertisement states.

A study conducted by Waseem Haider,a surgeon at the Medico-Legal Punjab office in Lahore,concluded that Pakistan’s Muslims,including women and adolescents,are more prone to becoming addicted to liquor than members of other communities.

Through data collected over five years,Haider found that addiction to alcohol is higher among Muslim men and women in urban areas than members of the Christian,Hindu and other minority communities.

Of the 1,560 intoxication cases detected by police and reported to the medico-legal office in the past five years,Muslims accounted for 92.89 per cent while people from other religions comprised 7.11 per cent.

The analysis of cases showed that even children aged between 10 and 15 years were consuming alcohol. The highest number of cases 42.56 per cent involved teenagers and young adults between 16 and 25 years.

According to a report in the New York Times,even the threat of death cannot deter one 30-year-old entrepreneur in Peshawar from his appointed rounds supplying the Pakistani elite with expensive contraband Scotch.

“The bootlegger employs an elaborate scheme to conceal his business,renting a private house that doubles as a secret warehouse and hiring teenage motorbike drivers to deliver his supplies.

Such inventiveness is a requirement in this line of business: to hide from the police,who want his money; the Taliban,who want his head; and his family,who would disown him,” the report said.

It is not unusual to hear of people taking ill or even dying after drinking locally brewed liquor.

At least 14 people died and four more fell seriously ill after drinking moonshine in the eastern Pakistani city of Multan a few months ago.