One method bootleggers have devised to get around the law is using women to transport liquor. Taking full advantage of the fact that woman are less likely to be frisked or meted the same treatment their male counterparts get during a prohibition raid, more and more women are taking to bootlegging in Surat.

According to the police, 60 per cent of the bootleggers in the city are women who transport liquor into the city by rail or road on a daily basis. While most of them are poor and do the job for survival, it is family business for the rest.

Recently, 27 women were arrested while carrying liquor in city-bound buses from Khajod and Dumas. Again on Monday, 16 of the 34 accused bootleggers arrested in a luxury bus were women, all from the Golwad area of the city. A similar situation prevails even in the rural parts, where women are beginning to take up the business more actively than the men of the family.

What ties the hands of the South Gujarat prohibition police when it comes to woman bootleggers is the absence of even a single woman constable in the department. This automatically gives all woman liquor transporters immunity from a physical search. Also, the police generally cannot arrest a woman under non-bailable Acts like PASA or keep her in overnight custody.

There have also been cases in the past where arrested women testified before a magistrate that the police tore their clothes, beat them up, attempted to molest them and used force to extract out a confession. This, according to Prohibition Superintendent M G Kaneriya, makes police officers turn a blind eye to their activities, encouraging them further.

Also, there are laws protecting women and was thus not possible to launch a concerted drive against women bootleggers, although the menace was increasing, he added. ``So I have been repeatedly requesting for appointing woman constables. But there have been none so far,'' he said.

Incidentally, according to police cases, more than 70 per cent of woman bootleggers operating in the city are widows, while others are married. Thus their need to earn a livelihood through bootlegging is viewed with sympathy even by the police.