MAHA ANAND, DUKHI PARIVAR

GOAN OBSERVER

Lead Story

MAHA ANAND, DUKHI PARIVAR
BY RAJAN NARAYAN

WHEN FORMER Haryana director general of police, S P S Rathore, got away with a six month sentence for molesting teenager Ruchika Girhotra and walked out of the Court with a triumphant smile on his face, there was an outrage in both the national electronic media and the print media. Forcing the Union Home Minister P C Chidambaram himself to take a personal interest in the matter and compelling the Union Law Ministry and the Union Home Ministry to issue orders that every complaint filed by any citizen should be registered by the police station. The order was provoked by the fact that in the Ruchika case as in several cases in which the serial killer of Goa Mahanand Naik was involved, the police did not register an FIR. Under the present procedures, the police have discretionary power on whether to register an FIR or not. A discretionary power which has been misused and abused, the latest case being the allegation by the Russian victim of rape that the police were reluctant to register an FIR and threatened her with cancellation of visa if she insisted that the police should register a complaint of rape against John Fernandes.

UNLIKE the public outrage in the national electronic and print media over the six-month sentence awarded to former DGP Rathore for molesting a teenager, there has been no sense of outrage even in the local media let alone the national media over the fact that the serial killer Mahanand Naik, who has confessed to killing as many as 16 women over a period of 15 years from 1994 till 2009 when he was arrested in a rape case, was acquitted in the first of the cases that came up for trial before the additional sessions judge of South Goa, Desmond D’Costa. The first of the 16 cases of murder that Mahanand Naik is alleged to have confessed related to the murder of Surat, daughter of Harishchandra Gaonkar, resident of Matt, Vizor Pachawadi, who went missing in March 2006. An FIR was filed against Mahanand Naik only on June 8, 2009 after he had allegedly confessed to her murder.

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