With the then Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar having handed over a botched up police investigation of that Vasco rape case to the CBI, it would be very improper to solely blame the CBI for having made no headway in that case. As a mere eyewash handing over the skeletons of that case seven long months after the rape was undoubtedly a case of too little and too late as far as the victim child was concerned. Despite it being a heinous crime against a 7 year old, Manohar Parrikar never ever cared to visit the victim and her grieving family displaying such insensitivity while the police methodically hushed up the case.
After that gruesome rape on January 14th 2013, the police though just a kilometer away were informed only three hours after the rape while the school staff cold-bloodedly and very high-handedly washed away all the vital evidence. The traumatized victim received medical attention only eight hours after she was brutally raped while she got counseling 15 days later. The little girl’s family may have been very poor but justice should not have eluded them. Her family not being affluent or influential is why the authorities succeeded in a planned cover up and deliberately botching up of the investigation to save the rapist. Incidentally on the very day of the rape it was local Mormugao MLA Milind Naik’s birthday and the celebration in the very neighborhood of that ghastly crime went on, with even the decibels not lowered. It is now over four long years that the Vasco little girl was mercilessly raped in broad day light in the toilet of Deep Vihar School run by the Mormugao Port Trust where she was studying in the second standard. While the little girl and her grief stricken parents relentlessly quest for justice, the alleged rapist and his accomplice are still free birds possibly scouting for another catch. If only the victim was a daughter of a Minister, a cash loaded businessman or an affluent citizen, the case would have been cracked in a day or two if not hours. Indeed, in Goa sorrowing is the state of lawlessness and disorder. We are living in times where justice is no longer our right. It has become the privilege of the rich and the well connected. There is an urgent need to ensure that the entire police force is totally insulated from all political machinations, influences and controls as has been rightly mandated time and again by the Supreme Court. The Goa Police’s effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy is currently in question and there is rightly a public perception that the police force have been acting as caged parrots on the diktats of the politicians in power. The Police have miserably failed to provide the service the public deserve and are rightly entitled to. The commitment, devotion and accountability of the police has to be only to the Rule of Law which requires that the police function without any regard, whatsoever, to the status and position of any person while investigating a crime. The Goa Police does have some very competent officers but it is those few other black sheep that put the entire police force to disgrace and disrepute. On account of the acts of omission and commission by such police officers, the Rule of Law becomes a casualty and the escalating levels of crime in the State is a matter of grave concern. Unless those criminal minded officers are flushed out of the system, law and order may be a far dream. There is a need to inject the right dose to invigorate the police to uphold the law at all times. For the intentional bungling and botching up of the investigation in the Vasco rape case, that little victim may never pardon Manohar Parrikar and those officers for the gross and deliberate dereliction of duty. In those words of Robert Kennedy “Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves. What is equally true is that every community gets the kind of law enforcement it insists on.” Aires Rodrigues Advocate High Court C/G-2, Shopping Complex Ribandar Retreat, Ribandar – Goa – 403006 Mobile No: 9822684372 Office Tel No: (0832) 2444012 Email: airesrodrigu...@gmail.com Or airesrodrig...@yahoo.com You can also reach me on Facebook.com/ AiresRodrigues Twitter@rodrigues_aires www.airesrodrigues.com