Police desk strips Anjuna flea market of its charm

| OCTOBER 31, 2019, 03:14 AM IST

AGNELO PEREIRA

MAPUSA  

The presence of a police ‘desk’ at the popular flea market in Anjuna has come as a dampener to many in the beach village, including the local panchayat.  

Anjuna Police have set up a foreigner’s passport verification desk at the flea market, which is a once a week dawn to dusk bazaar popular among the foreigners.  

On Wednesday, however, locals, and particularly foreigners, were taken by surprise with the presence of police personnel sitting behind a desk in the bustling market.  

The Anjuna flea market held every Wednesday was started way back in 1970s by the hippies who would converge at one place sharing their experiences and selling jewellery and other stuff to fund their stay in India.  

However, from early ’90s the trend has become more Indianised with most of the stalls taken over by Tibetans, Kashmiris and even some tribal women selling t-shirts, colourful sarees, bags, trinkets, etc.  

According to the Anjuna police, the purpose behind setting up a desk at the flea market was to verify the documents of the foreigners visiting the place.  

“Besides verifying the documents of the foreigners, we also check passports of foreigners who have set up stalls to see whether they have a business visa or not,” Anjuna PI Suraj Gawas said.  

The police ‘desk’ however, has upset the other business operators and locals from the area as foreigners have begun to shun the market and it has affected their business.  

“It’s a sorry state of affairs. Instead of setting up a passport verification desk, the cops should have set up a help desk to guide the foreigners. This will only scare away the foreigners from the market,” said a member of the village panchayat requesting anonymity.  

The market is set up in a private land and more than 300 stalls dot the open place close to the beach at St Minguel vaddo, Anjuna.  

Although the Indian business operators call the shots now, the flea market has not lost its charm.  

But with the police desk making its presence felt, business operators fear the worst.  

“We will write to the police that their presence is going to impact the market and people (read foreigners) will not visit the market,” said Savio Almeida, Anjuna sarpanch.  

But locals in the know informed that a lot of illegal activities also take place in the market and  police presence is thus welcome.

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