Here’s the deal: we have a bad habit of littering because we think we can get away with it. But what if you couldn’t? How scary would it be if a cop called you and asked if you’d littered in a public place? That’s what happened when a group of students in Chennai left the remains of their celebration behind on the footpath of Besant Nagar beach.
The News Minute reported that on March 29, Grade One Constable Ebin Christopher was patrolling the area when he spotted the mess students had made. Taking things in hand, he decided to teach them a lesson. “This is a place where many aged people take a walk. It cannot be so poorly maintained like this,” he told the news portal.
Ebin tracked the group through the bakery whose empty boxes they had littered along the pathway. He asked them to reach the exact place where they had carelessly dumped the garbage. Fearing a complaint, the boys obliged to his order of cleaning the footpath. “I am not against any celebration. But why is it only the responsibility of the sanitary workers to clean the place. Everyone should take up the responsibility to preserve the beauty,” he told The Times of India.
The constable chose this form of punishment for the students in order to deter them from repeating this behaviour in future. Ebin, who is posted at the Sashtri Nagar police station, was previously with the Mount Armed Reserve Forces. The Times of India reports that he is part of the team that patrols the beach area from 4 pm to 1 am.
