The views expressed in the following article are that of the author Dr Olav Albuquerque and not of Goan Observer.
THE Goa Police is again plunged into a controversy because the SP (South) Sunita Sawant, was shunted out of this prime executive posting. The rumors doing the rounds is that she overstepped her boundaries by sending wireless messages to all police śtations under her jurisdiction, asking for details of the top Bajrang Dal leaders.
When these leaders inquired with the constables and under lower-level police in these police stations, they came to know that SP Sunita Sawant had issued the orders. It seems they pressurized the top brass to get her transferred from her post as SP (South.)
The state government normally announces these postings in the Official Gazette. But in a departure from practice, a wireless message was flashed around 10.30 pm directing Sunita Sawant to hand over charge to the next incumbent. She complied with this directive and has now been posted at the Police Headquarters at the DGP’s office at Panjim.
While this story seems credible, another story doing the rounds is that SP Sunita Sawant is a victim to the IPS versus GPS rivalry for the top police posts. The two posts of SP (South) and SP (North) are normally occupied by IPS cadre officers who come on deputation from the AGMUT (Assam, Goa, Manipur and Union Territories) cadre. These officers, like the dubious Jaspal Singh who was the former DGP, normally serve a stint before they go back to their parent cadre. A former DGP was plunged into a controversy for allegedly buying a bungalow as a second home after his retirement.
Goa is a prime destination for those who live in Delhi. So, if you are posted here as DGP or Chief Secretary, why not buy a second home? Leaving this parat, Sunit Sawant is a non-corrupt officer because she does not take bribes. If she had asked for the details of top Bajrang Dal leaders, this was well within her line of duty. She was shunted out just two days after the Governor of Goa, PS Sreedharan Pillai, gave her an award for her meticulous planning during the last assembly elections.
My first contact with her was after I met the former Deputy IGP, Aslam Khan, IPS, who was deputed from Delhi. The High Court had quashed a false FIR allegedly planned and executed against me by Kiran Poduval, who was the Deputy SP in-charge of Porvorim when I visited him with a typed request to send a police vehicle during a site inspection at Salvador do Mundo on September 27, 2018. Poduval promised me he would do so when I visited him on September 26, 2018. He asked me if I feared for my life and I told him those who built illegal houses may murder my 89-year-old client, John Menezes and myself. Poduval promised to send the jeep but the next day, he deliberately did not do so on telephonic instruction from the minister concerned.
From what I learnt later, he allegedly did not send the police jeep after phoning Shailesh Shetty, who was a business partner of a prominent minister from the Goa cabinet and local MLA from Salvador do Mundo. Kiran Poduval not only abstained from sending the jeep but allegedly fabricated a bogus FIR against me, to ensure I withdraw my complaint against the Sarpanch who had assaulted me with goons who had built illegal constructions. He had even incited them to murder me. After that, there is a video recording of the Goa cabinet minister with a huge mob of his supporters, visiting Kiran Poduval, PI Santosh Dessai and PSI Sagun Sawant to demand my arrest.
From what my well-wishers told me, Kiran Poduval directed the registration of the false FIR against me, and ordered that I be arrested in a false case of assault which I could never have committed because I was surrounded by a hostile mob of those engaged in illegal constructions. They were led by the Sarpanch who incited them.
After the erudite judges of the High Court of Bombay at Goa saw through this charade and quashed the false FIR against me, I met the DIGP, Aslam Khan, in her office with a copy of the judgment. She heard me out, quietly summoned Nelson Albuquerque, GPS, who sat and listened to my story. I got a phone call from a lady in the evening who identified herself as Sunita Sawant. She asked me for photographs and other evidence taken during the brutal assault on me at Salvador do Mundo. I visited her accompanied by my wife and my advocate, Vedraj Toraskar. She promised to submit a report.
Several months later, when I did not hear anything more about this case, I submitted an RTI request and was shocked to receive a reply from one Ms Loveleen Dias, police inspector, that “there was no such document available in the police headquarters.” This was astounding. The only inference I could draw was that Sunita Sawant did not conduct the probe. Or if she did, PI Loveleen Dias has not done her job properly by finding out where this report has been filed.
The IO in my complaint of brutal assault on me with alleged attempt to murder, PI Dashrath Gawas, has told the Assistant Public Prosecutor that he could not get hold of the photographs of the brutal assault and two videos which have been supplied to his boss, Sunita Sawant. This case will end in acquittal of the accused because of the incompetence and political pressure on these policemen who allegedly want to oblige their political masters.
I have no option but to approach the Goa Police Complaints Authority against all these officers for wasting my time, money and energy. But those things apart, what Goans should know is that when they approach a police station to register an FIR in a cognizable case, these police officers are reluctant to do so. They will bluff you by saying it is a civil dispute or fool you by accepting your complaint, making a diary entry and giving you a number. They will then tell you to approach the court to pursue your complaint.
This is a blatant violation of the law because the Supreme Court has reiterated time and again that the police have no choice but to immediately register an FIR in cognizable crimes. By refusing to do so, these police offices commits contempt of court.
I had this experience in a separate property cheating case when I sent a typed complaint from Mumbai. The IO who summoned me all the way from Mumbai was one Chandrakant Velip, who kept giving excuses not to register an FIR by saying it was a civil dispute. Even after his top boss, the then SP (South), Chandan Choudhary, IPS, ordered her deputy SP, Dinraj Govekar, to verify and lodge an FIR if my complaint was found to be bona fide. This ailing and medically unfit ASI, Chandrakant Velip, kept giving excuse that his brother had expired and he had to look after his brother’s children. I was in no way concerned with these absurd excuses.
What takes the cake is that Chandrakant Velip, who was promoted to PSI despite my complaints against him, lied in the court saying I had prevented him from visiting my house when in fact, he had refused to register an FIR. This delinquent PSI, Chandrakant Velip, has now been transferred out of the Maina Curtorim police station to the Konkan Railway “because he cannot cope with the work,” according to his own colleagues.
These are the typical sort of policemen you will encounter in your visit to the police stations in Goa.
