'Hooch Queen' rehabilitated

By Our Special Correspondent

BANGALORE, OCT. 24. Though Bangalore has produced a good many ``beauty queens'' national, international and universal, a ``Hooch Queen'' has outsmarted them in the run up to the November 11 elections to the Council of the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike. The Janata Dal (Secular) has finally opted for the ``Hooch Queen'' Maarimuthu as its candidate for the Sagayapuram ward.

The logic behind her selection might be that when the partner of the JD(S) in the Third Front, the Samata Party, could get the ``Bandit Queen'', the late Phoolan Devi, elected twice from the Mirzapur Lok Sabha seat in Uttar Pradesh, Maarimuthu was eminently ``qualified'' to represent the people of the Tannery Road area in Bangalore East.

Maarimuthu and one Ameer Sultan had been blamed for the July 1981 hooch tragedy in Bangalore which claimed 300 lives. Mysore city came up with a score of 36 deaths. Mr. Justice R.J. Desai, a former judge of the Karnataka High Court, had constituted the commission of inquiry into the tragedy. The names of Maarimuthu and Sultan used to figure in the proceedings of the commission. The judge had painstakingly conducted the proceedings and came up with a detailed and thought-provoking report. But those in the JD(S) today, who were reviling the Government of the late Gundu Rao over the liquor tragedy, seem to be suffering from amnesia with regard to the Hooch Queen.

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Section  : Southern States
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