An age old system of illegally recovering money from passers-by called “chauth-vasooli” during the time of festivals like Holi, Rangpanchmi and Sheetla saptmi needs a strict action now. This system has troubled enough travellers and passers-by where rocks and boulders are used to block roads, colour applied forcibly and money actually extracted from people. In case of opposition, the people doing vasooli threaten and even do not allow people to move ahead.

As a tradition, this kind of system was followed in a much decent way in the olden times. But in the past few years, notorious acts have actually caused much fear in the minds of travellers and localites passing through a certain route. The vasooli people do not even consider the sensitivity of a person’s travel.

Since there is no police patrol on the rural routes, the activities are going on in a full-fledged way. Though administration had appointed people to tackle such issues, yet no strict steps have been taken until now. Due to festive season, most of the routes do not see much of buses and other means of transport like autos and tempos, as a result travellers on these lonely roads become an easy catch for the notorious elements. These people harass milk vendors, attendants of patients and even people from other religions who do not play holi. Threatening to cover all these people with colour, the ruffianist characters force them to pay before moving ahead else their route is blocked and they are not allowed moving further.

Recently, the police stations and patrol on round have been instructed to deal strictly with these types of cases, said Dr.Vishnukant, SP Rajsamand.

Help line number for this purpose – District police control room number- 02952-220712 and 100.