Pinky walks up to the dance floor in the middle of Chandni Bar, flashes a smile at a group of regulars drinking at a table and breaks into a hip-twitching number to the tune of Brazil. The music gets louder and the wallets lighter as Pinky's ghaghra swirls above the barely visible faces in the dim-lit, smoke-filled room. Then, close to midnight, an entirely unwelcome group barges through the doors: a posse of policemen on a raid.

The surprise search changed Pinky's career as a dancer, as it did the lives of the owners of Mumbai's 200-odd girlie bars. Pinky was one of the 50 bar dancers bundled into a waiting police van that night as part of a new drive by the Mumbai Police's Social Service Branch. A series of raids against so-called ladies' bars and over 300 arrests have now dimmed the happy hours in Mumbai's ubiquitous watering holes. For years, these bars have been as much a part of the city's nightscape as the Queen's Necklace on Marine Drive. Madhur Bhandarkar, who directed the film Chandni Bar, calls them "secular watering holes". "There is no caste, creed or class here-everyone, from rickshaw drivers and stockbrokers to gangsters and policemen, sits in these bars."

This class-blurring appeal and the absurd prices-a bottle of cola costs Rs 200, the same as a glass of beer-contribute to making these saloons more profitable than other enterprises of comparable size-each makes upwards of Rs 2 crore a month. The police believe these ladies' bars, many of them illegal, serve up a brew of sex, spirits and exploitation to soak in revenues of over Rs 500 crore annually. Though officially these bars are granted licences by the police for "Indian classical dance performances", there's nothing even remotely traditional about the dances. "Dance bars? They were more like brothels," scoffs DCP Archana Tyagi of the Social Service Branch.

Ravi Pal Singh Gandhi of the Association of Hoteliers and Restaurateurs applauds these raids as being in the interest of society. "But let's face it, no such illegal activity goes on for so long without the police knowing about it," he adds. Aiding the bars in no small measure is the hafta or protection money they give to both the underworld and local police stations, besides a waiver of cover charges plus free drinks at times.

Not anymore. The watering holes have been running dry after the police began cancelling licences and arresting dancers and sex workers. Local police stations weren't informed about the raids. Police Commissioner M.N. Singh warned the city's 78 police stations of serious consequences if they were found conniving with bar owners. The commissioner has now set even the municipal corporation and the income-tax authorities after them. "These bars cater to the lumpen elements in society and have a direct bearing on our war against crime," he says. Police vehicles now routinely stop by to check if these bars stick to the 1.30 a.m. closing time.

But what's to explain the sudden burst of bar policing? Well, 2002 is proving to be Mumbai Police's annus horribilis. The embarrassing court acquittals in the Mohammed Afroz, Nadeem Saifee and Bharat Shah cases have completely overshadowed their larger achievement in bottling up organised crime with a blizzard of encounters. The police are hoping the drive against the dance bars will give them a much-needed breather from the legal opprobrium and help them score positive points with Mumbai's citizens too.