Cafe owner booked for running illegal hookah parlour in Hyderabad

Hyderabad: Six customers and the owner of a cafe were arrested during a raid by the Hyderabad police commissioner’s task force, along with Bahadurpura police for running an illegal hookah parlour.

Muzammil, 26, the owner of Wolf Cafe and Lounge under the limits of Bahadurpura police station, has been running the establishment for a long time. Due to insufficient profits in the business, he hatched a plan to serve hookah illegally.

As per his plan, he had been serving hookah pots by mixing the hookah flavours which contained nicotine and suspicious substances as ingredients at the Hyderabad cafe. He charged a higher price for hookah pots and gained easy profits. He had been purchasing hookah flavours from one pan shop owner named Mohd Nazeer.

Muzammil was booked for a similar crime last year.

Muzammil alongside Mohd Furkhan Ahmed, 18, Mohd Nazeer, 41, Sayed Zameer, 25, Syed Sohail, 20, Syed Fazal, 20, and Mohd Mukkram, 20, were apprehended by the police on Wednesday, September 25.

19 hookah pots, 5 boxes of flavours, and 6 boxes of coils, all worth Rs 30,000, were seized from the illegal parlour in Hyderabad.

Muzammil has been booked under Section 223 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Sections 6 and 7 of The Cigarettes and other Tobacco Products (Prohibition of Advertisement and Regulation of Trade and Commerce, Production, Supply and Distribution) (COTP) Act, 2003.

Section 6 prohibits the sale of cigarettes or other tobacco products to a person below the age of eighteen years and in a particular area, whereas Section 7 imposes restrictions on trade and commerce in, and production, supply and distribution of cigarettes and other tobacco products.