By Dr Olav Albuquerque
Goa High Court refrains from issuing contempt notice to DGP, chief secretary …
THE Bombay high court at Goa has not issued a contempt notice to the two top bureaucrats of Goa. The two are the chief secretary who is the senior most IAS officer of the senior most batch from the AGMUT cadre and the DGP of police who is an IPS officer and is the head of the Goa Police. Both were pulled up by the high court for not preventing illegal sand mining.
A division bench of Justices Mahesh Sonak and Valmiki Menezes were persuaded not to get tough with the DGP, Jaswant Singh, who is a former Intelligence Bureau officer and who served earlier in Goa as an inspector general of police. The judges pointed out that the talukas, where illegal sand mining proliferates unchecked, have their own three police stations headed by a senior police inspector assisted by his juniors.
The bench pointed out it was impossible for these police officers to be unaware that sand was being extracted illegally so that the natural barriers against sea erosion were removed. Sand is used in the construction industry where it is mixed with cement to make concrete used between bricks while constructing buildings. It does not take much imagination to visualize that some of these police officers and the lowly constables have been bribed to look the other way when sand is extracted — in defiance of the previous orders of the high court.
Contempt is well-defined in the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 as either civil or criminal contempt. Civil contempt is deliberate disobedience to any writ, order, decree or willful flouting of any undertaking given to the court. The judges orally remarked on this public interest litigation argued by advocate Norma Alvares who argued on behalf of the Goa Rivers Sand Protectors Network.
10 ILLEGAL SAND MINING SITES
Ms ALVARES furnished to the court a list of at least 10 sites with photographs where illegal sand mining is going on unabated, despite the high court being seized of the matter. This list includes places such as Maina-Navelim, Betki near Amona bridge in Bicholim, near the Volvoi ferry point, Kankan, Savoi-Verem, Bidruk, Murdi-Khandepar, and Savoi, Ghano in Ponda taluka near Sarmanas and St Estevam ferry points at Tiswadi. Also at Torxem and Poroscodem in Pernem taluka.
The DGP and the chief secretary filed affidavits in the high court assuring that strict action would be taken when in fact, no action was taken at all. The judges stated these assurances remained “mere paper assurances.” Both Justices Sonak and Valmiki Menezes pointed out that each of the talukas mentioned above had at least two police stations which meant there were a total of seven to eight police stations involved.
“It is difficult to accept that those in-charge of these police stations are blissfully unaware of this large-scale activity (illegal sand-mining) which needs extraction of sand by laborers who load the extracted sand into trucks which in turn empty the sand into canoes for transportation upriver,” the judges observed.
The judges pointed out that neither the chief secretary nor the DGP thought it expedient to change the policemen attached to these police stations, or to initiate action against the senior police officers who hold charge of these police stations. They went on to add that they were “seriously considering” whether the DGP (Jaswant Singh) should remain personally present in the court on the next date of hearing to explain if those subordinate policemen under him are serious about obeying court orders.
DILENQUENT POLICE
TRAGICALLY, the judges did not dictate such directions in their order after they were persuaded not to do so by the additional government pleader, Deep Shirodkar. It is relevant to state that the high court rarely pulls up the police although there have been innumerable instances reported of gross indiscipline and corruption within the Goa Police. The only authority to pull up these delinquent police is the Goa State Police Complaints Authority at Altinho which is headed by a retired high court judge, Nutan Sardessai.
Although not connected with this case, this author had the nightmarish experience of a senior police inspector Chetan L Patil who has now retired as an SP of the Goa Police, refusing to register an FIR in a gross criminal case of cheating from Cavorim-Chandor where an employee of the village panchayat has been charged with cheating.
When this author was insistent that an FIR be registered as per the Surpeme Court guidelines in Lalita Kumari versus State of UP, this allegedly delinquent police officer laughed and replied: “The courts say one thing today and another thing tomorrow. If I go by what the courts say, I will never finish my work and reach home.”
Complaints made to the SP (South) and the DGP’s office yielded no results so that Chetan L Patil was allowed to happily retire, although he allegedly spoke disrespectfully of the courts. Another Dy SP Raju Raut Dessai refused to allow this author to see a bogus closure report filed by the then ASI Chadrakant Velip who was physically unfit with a hole in his heart, according to sources. “The matter is sub-judice, I cannot allow you to read the report,” said Raju Raut Dessai.
When he was asked what he understood by the expression sub-judice, he replied that when the constable took the file to the court, it became sub-judice. This is why it is a tragedy when the erudite judges of the high court choose to be lenient with the DGP and the chief secretary instead of issuing them a notice for alleged contempt of court so that they are forced to explain their actions.
After the police file a charge-sheet, the Assistant Public Prosecutors (APPs) take over. Some of them are rude and ineffective in their work because they do not pull up the police when these APPs know very well their investigation is sub-standard.
Goa is being slowly destroyed by grossly inefficient or corrupt police aided by some negligent APPs. Both the police and the APPs draw their salaries from the home department of the Goa government.