“Six days shalt thou paddle and pack, but on the seventh thou shall wash thy socks.”
When Aldo Leopold, a wildlife biologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin said this over seven decades ago, he wouldn’t have imagined people one day would be getting arrested for stinky socks.
Police in India arrested a man precisely for this reason after his allegedly stinky socks caused a showdown when he decided to relieve his tired feet out of his shoes on a public bus.
Much to the chagrin of fellow passengers, 27-year-old Prakash Kumar removed his shoes and socks and put them near the aisle while travelling on a bus from Himachal Pradesh to the Indian capital New Delhi, causing the fellow travellers to strongly protested the pungent odour, police said.
Others on the bus asked Mr Kumar to put away the smelly socks or throw them out.
A heated confrontation began when Mr Kumar refused to heed his fellow passengers, forcing the driver to take the bus to a police station in Una district of Himachal Pradesh.
The police chief of Una district said the man had threatened other passengers and caused a disturbance at the police station.
“He was arrested on charges of causing public nuisance and later released on bail,”
Sanjeev Gandhi, Superintendent of Police told AFP.
Kumar, a tourist from Bihar who visiting the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, filed a complaint against his fellow passengers and the bus driver and conductor for harassment and insisted his socks did not smell, the officer said.
Police told the BBC that Mr Kumar left a day later on another bus after being granted bail.
