A still from Chandni Bar, a 2001 film featuring the Mumbai underworld, prostitution and dance bars

A raid on two bars in central Calcutta revealed to cops a violation rampant in watering holes across the city for years.

Rhythm and Cherry Pick, the Waterloo Street bars raided on Friday, had a crooning licence — which means performers could sing, not dance, to entertain customers.

During the raid, however, plainclothesmen spotted girls dancing to racy chartbusters at both bars.

Five bandmasters, who arrange the shows and hire the performers, have been arrested. They are Bhaskar Bose, Kalyan Mandal, Sajid Khan, Shahid Beg and Sheikh Sanjay.

“The dancers could not be rounded up as law prohibits arresting women at night. The raiding cops took down the names and other details of the performers,” said a police officer at Lalbazar. “Along with the bars, the singers, too, have to take a police licence to perform. The licences of the performers at the two bars will not be renewed.”

As for the managements of the bars, the officer said their representatives had been summoned to Lalbazar.

“The crooners at the bars were not even pretending to sing. None was holding a microphone. We had seized instruments used to play recorded songs,” the officer said.

Police sources said dancing in violation of the crooning licence was rampant in over 25 bars in the Bowbazar-Esplanade-New Market area.

Metro had in April visited a number of bars across the city and spotted a number of instances of rule violation. Most of the bars were open even at 1am, an hour after they were supposed to close down, while cops standing a few feet away were looking the other way.

Of the eight performers in one of the bars, only one was a singer. The rest were gyrating to the songs as customers kept showering the stage with currency notes.

A police officer said dancing at bars in the city started after the Maharashtra government banned it in 2005.

“Nearly 700 bars closed down after the ban had kicked in. Girls who used to dance there, especially those from the state, flocked to Calcutta,” the officer said.

“Bar and restaurant owners here applied for a crooning licence and it was granted. But soon they started violating the condition of the licence and encouraged the girls to dance.”

According to officers of the anti-rowdy squad of the detective department, singing and dancing at bars had invited trouble on several occasions. “Three years ago, a drunken brawl over a crooner inside a bar on Bentick Street had led to a firing. The crooner was abducted from in front of the bar,” said an officer.

Cops said many of the dancing bars were also involved in sleaze trade.

Minor tortured: Ajoy Dey and wife Mampi were arrested in Hooghly’s Hind Motor late on Saturday for allegedly torturing a 10-year-old girl they had hired to look after their eight-month-old girl. The couple were picked up from their house after the victim’s mother alleged that they used to force the girl to do odd jobs and beat her up if she failed to do so.

Cellphones seized: A consignment of around 1,000 cellphones was seized from the Delhi-Howrah Duronto Express at Howrah station at 9am on Sunday.