Rave parties: Why we rant when people party

If you followed the press coverage in the days following the police raid on a party in Juhu, Mumbai, last week, you could conclude that the event was a pure distillation of all the evil that could possibly occur when a hundred-odd young people gather to let their hair down.
First, when ACP Vishwas Nangare-Patil appeared before the media last Sunday evening, immediately after the raid at Juhu's Oakwood Premier hotel, there was suggestion of much wrongdoing.
"Approximately 110 gm of cocaine was found. Prima facie reports also suggest MDMA or ecstasy tablets. We will confirm after verification. There are lot of foreign women among those detained," he said. Viewers were free to imagine their favourite cocktail of evil involving cocaine, MDMA, IPL players and 'foreign women'.
Pictures of fashionably dressed women hiding their faces with pricey handbags, even as they were led to a police van by khakhi-sari-clad women cops, strikingly reminiscent of a prostitution bust, became the defining image of the raid. It confirmed, with scant evidence, the middleclass suspicion that rich girls in short skirts at upscale parties must be up to no good.
The Amul girl, that bellwether of news events with societal impact, joined the walk of shame, but chose not to hide her face, in an ad with the tagline 'Rave about it'. The men who were taken for tests in police vans seemed to deem it a cool ride, an extension of the good time they were having before cops came. Some smoked cigarettes in the police van, others flashed rap gestures at photographers. A few bothered to cover their faces.
In subsequent days, "police sources" made all sorts of insinuations - mainly about the women - while speaking to the press. The party was a front for a prostitution racket, one report said. Media reports repeated the cops' moral judgements about women wearing "skimpy clothes" and "dancing in semi-nude condition".
Rave Buster
The decisive clue that this party was a rave party apparently came from the Facebook invite that went to more than 2,500 people. A line in the badly written invite said "Support music, not drugs".
Nangare-Patil, the cop who helmed the operation, has acquired a reputation for being something of a rave buster. In June last year, he busted a 'rave' party at a resort in Raigad. The raid party arrested a cop from Mumbai's anti-narcotics cell, who was found with banned substances.
Of the 300 detained, 60 later tested positive for cannabis. When Nangare-Patil busted another 'rave' party in Pune in 2008, cops found no drugs and released the 150-odd detainees. Party organisers were subsequently charged for organising a "noisy, late-night party" and for storing large quantities of alcohol in the premises.
In Juhu, when very little illegal substances were recovered, the cops fed the media the story that a major drug peddler was involved and he managed to escape. The insinuations then turned to the IPL players, about whom everyone apparently suspects the worst.