party on!!

The Times of India reports - Among those arrested were call centre and IT firm employees, children of affluent businessmen, air hostesses and college students. The police seized seven bottles of phenylfine hydrochloride, two-and-half-kg of marijuana (ganja), 100 gm of hashish (charas) beer cans, cigarettes, music systems, 45 cars, 29 two-wheelers and an unspecified number of mobile phones were seized from the spot.

The revellers had come for the party from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Belgaum, Chennai, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. They were charged an entry fee of Rs 500 per person to enter the party zone.

Nangre-Patil told TOI that 50 per cent of the names and addresses given by the suspects turned out to be fake. Some addresses were correct because they were taken from credit cards and driving licences. Interestingly, at the (badminton hall) court, friends and family members provided cigarettes to the suspects from windows. As soon as the judge left the court room, a few youths started singing, clapping and dancing!

moon dust in the desert

Some billed it as the indian woodstock, some as the next goa, and some as another cynical ploy to lure tourists. The villagers viewed it differently and the police always eager to investigate white girls dancing got into the act too.. A friend who went there says it was mindbogglingly awesome till they had to cut and run at 4:30 am.

The venerable Times newspaper in UK has this to say -

The days when India turned a blind eye to drug abuse by Western backpackers may be over It was billed as the biggest music festival of its kind in India — a four-day “psychedelic trance” party in the middle of the desert in Rajasthan.
But the inaugural Moondust Festival has been shut down on its second day in the latest sign of a backlash against the New Age culture that has attracted Westerners to India since the 1960s.

The move comes after a ban on all-night beach parties in the southern Indian state of Goa. Police broke up the Moondust Festival at about 3am on Monday after local villagers complained that the 3,000 guests were drinking alcohol, taking drugs and indulging in “indecent behaviour”.

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