Excise enforcers fight an uphill battle as hooch dens mushroom in Kerala during lockdown

Excise officials say many persons who lost their jobs due to the closure of bars, beer and wine parlours and toddy shops have taken to unlawful brewing

‘Perumpambu’, which translates into English as python, has off late assumed criminal connotations of illicit distillation and bootlegging for the Kerala Excise Department. T. Anikumar, head of the State Excise Enforcement Squad (SEES), says the term, is a lockdown era enforcement phraseology. It refers to the relatively new method of concealing huge reservoirs of wash underground in cylindrical lengths of thick-walled plastic balloons. “When wrenched out from their underground burrows, the lengthy wash-filled receptacle appears to resemble the distended belly of a python that had just swallowed a large prey. Hence, the nickname,” he says.