(Author's note: Though a bit long, this instalment is on one
of colonial Goa's shadiest actors, and a wee bit more!)
Portugal had an able terror counterpart in Goa: PIDE (Polícia
Internacional e de Defesa do Estado), the dreaded secret
service police. It was brought to Goa by Governor-General
Brigadier Paulo Bénard Guedes (1952-58).
Guedes also brought his wife, Mme. Maria José Borges, a
colourfully famous personage. Her visits to churches and
homes in Goa inspired a feeling not of privilege but of
trepidation: she gracefully plundered antiques and artifacts
-- and sold them for giddy sums in Europe.
PIDE was created in 1945 as an autonomous secret police force
under the Ministry of Home. By law No. 39,749 of 9 August
1954, PIDE was reorganised and vested with overriding powers.
It became an extra-constitutional monster. Portugal's
Minister for Justice, Manuel Gonçalves Cavaleiro de Ferreira,
resigned in protest over the law two days before its
enactment. PIDE bypassed every authority, including the
local governor.
It had a radio transmitter in Panjim and communicated with
Lisbon without the knowledge of the governor. PIDE agents
wielded unrestrained power and committed excesses with human
rights violations and extortion -- both on suspects, often
innocent, and political prisoners.
PIDE's most notorious torturer of political suspects was a
mestiço (Luso-descendant), Casimiro Emérito Rosa Teles Jordão
Monteiro, a.k.a. Agente Monteiro.
The Goan Advocate-Notary Fernando Jorge Colaço in his book
December 18-19, 1961: Before, During & After (Memoir of a
20th Century Voyager, Goa,1556: 2017) says Casimiro Monteiro
"would boast that his mother was a good Brahmin lady from
Curtorim"”. He was fluent in Portuguese, English and Konkani.
He was a mercenary who fought for Dictator Franco in the
Spanish Civil War, then for the Blue Division of Nazi Germany
against the USSR and, as a commando, under General Montgomery
against the Germans. [He later killed a goldsmith in
London.]
Describing him as "human only in the form", Adv.
Colaço says that in Goa, Monteiro lived in Santa
Cruz/Kalapur and operated from the Police HQ. He
would roam the territory in a jeep, mostly after 10
pm, with a group of guards, picking up suspects and
sadistically torturing them. He even committed
three or four murders and used to 'beat' every
woman arrested (Colaço, 2017, Pages 28-30).
"If there was one person who, more than any other, fiercely
battled the freedom movement, it was the mestizo Casimiro
Monteiro," says freedom fighter Dr. Suresh Kanekar. "He
[Casimiro Monteiro] used a variety of crude methods of
torture and harassment to gather information about the armed
movement..... Occasionally, innocent people were tortured
into giving false confessions, and a few died under the
inhuman treatment received...
"A poignantly tragic case was that of a woman from Mapusa
Shrimati Diukar [who was a nurse with surgeon-freedom fighter
Dr. P.D. Gaitonde].... After she was arrested and put in
police custody in Panaji, Casimiro Monteiro apparently had
his way with her and seduced her expost facto. Mitra
Kakodkar [later Mitra Bir, wife of legislator Madhav Bir] ...
was felled by Monteiro to the ground unconscious with a
mighty slap one day because she tried to warn Diukar against
his machinations. I heard about this from Mitra herself"
(Kanekar, 2011, Page 60).
On 18 September 1956 at about 9 pm, masked men of the Azad
Gomantak Dal killed policeman Jerónimo Barreto at
Ardhafond-Canacona. Next morning, policemen swooped down on
the nearby Partagal Matha and arrested 30 priests and
students suspected of having helped the assassins.
Agente Monteiro interrogated them. Two died by the same
evening -- head pujari Parashuram Acharya and bhatt Keshav
Tengse -- and their bodies were hurriedly cremated under
police guard. Fifteen accused led by the dead Parashuram's
father, Srinivas Dharma Acharya -- who was allegedly tortured
by Casimiro Monteiro -- were arraigned (one in absentia).
They were charged with being 'terrorists' and killing the
cop. Four of the five judges at the Tribunal Militar
Territorial (military court in Panjim) were army officers.
Brainy, brawny and brave, Adv. António Bruto da Costa of
Margao was a pacifist at heart. At a time when few would
dare, he led the solemn cortege, carried the urn and
delivered a stirring oration when Gandhiji's ashes were
immersed at Colva in 1948. When provoked, he punched the
daylights out of Governor Commander Quintanilha Dias in 1952.
Now in 1956, Adv. Bruto da Costa defended Srinivas Acharya
and 11 other accused while Adv. Vinayak Sinai Kaissare
defended the balance two.
Condemning terrorism in all its forms, Adv. Bruto da Costa
pointedly referred to "extortion of confessions, false
statements, specious denunciations and unjust accusations,
made in the shadow of a true and elevated judicial regime,
which is the bulwark of all well-organized societies, by
misguided, impatient, violent agentes, easily prone to untold
abuses and barbarities that are still in vogue in countries
that pride themselves on being civilized."
Dogs imported from Germany, Adv. Bruto da Costa told the
miffed court, need smell to follow the trail of a criminal
but the police's nose is superior to that of dogs. Nobody
had recognized the perpetrators, but the police had smelled
them at Partagal Matha from thin air!
At start of the trial, the police chief of Goa, Captain
Joaquim Pinto Brás, the Mayor of Tiswadi, Dr. Constâncio
Mascarenhas and the editor of Heraldo, Álvaro de Santa Rita
Vaz, hosted a banquet in honor of Casimiro Monteiro and
glorified him.
During the trial, Adv. Bruto da Costa flipped and frizzled
the feared Agente. The Supreme Military Court in Lisbon
annulled the case and ordered a reinvestigation. At the
retrial, all the accused were acquitted.
(For more on the court proceedings of that sensational case,
see Goa: A Terceira corrente (Discursos, artigos, cartas e
defesas forenses de António A. Bruto da Costa) by Adv.
Mário Bruto da Costa, 2013, Pages 204 to 215.)
On the first death anniversary of Felicio Cardoso, 17 May
2005 at Seraulim-Salcete, Goa's inimitable and multi-lingual
(Konkani, French, English, Marathi, Hindi and Portuguese)
poet-laureate Dr. ManoharRai SarDessai -- the likes of who
Goa should be fortunate to see again -- said that every
wannabe Goan politician should first undergo a month's
solitary confinement at Aguada jail and taste some strokes of
Agente Monteiro as Felicio Cardoso had done (Xavier Cota,
Tribute to Felicio Cardoso -- the Unassuming Giant). Of
medium height and build, Felicio Cardozo, a high school
teacher by profession, was indeed a giant of a man, a
dauntless freedom fighter and an upright and fearless
journalist-editor who had been a victim of Casimiro Monteiro.
Another Goan freedom fighter, Mário Rodrigues of Cavelossim,
was an airman with the Indian Air Force in Bangalore.
Influenced by the 1946 Naval Mutiny in Bombay, he left the
IAF and joined the Azad Gomantak Dal in 1947 and became an
underground freedom fighter. Rodrigues was determined to get
Casimiro Monteiro. He roamed with a fully loaded handgun for
the purpose. The firearm would not fit into his trouser
pocket, so Rodrigues tucked it in his waist belt under an
out/bush shirt.
Rodrigues often paid nightly visits to his friend in Margao,
Nuno Rosario da Silva, whose father Raimundo Domingos da
Silva possessed two shops in Margao's old market. In one
shop, Domingos made coffins (Casa Domingos, Agencia
Funerária) while Rosario hired out BSA and Zundap 50cc mopeds
from the other.
A good part of Rosario's clientele was Portuguese
troops who during their evening break hired the
bikes to go to Chandravaddo, a tribal area, for
some fun. While the soldiers frolicked at the
nearby Ambajim hilltops, one of Rosario's friends
punctured tyres of their bikes parked on the road,
fetching Rosario some extra income. (Rosario would
eventually marry that friend's sister, the friend
would go on to become an ace motorcycle mechanic,
and Rosario and Remediana's only child, Epifanio,
is a dear friend of this author.)
Possibly to get info on Portuguese military personnel,
freedom fighter Rodrigues befriended and often paid nightly
visits to Rosario, who slept in the coffin shop to make it a
24x7 service. One night, when Rodrigues was with Rosario at
the coffin shop, they heard a PIDE ronda (armed surveillance
patrol) approaching. Rosario told Rodrigues that he would
get him in trouble and quickly hid the freedom fighter in a
coffin until the danger subsided. Rodrigues never succeeded
in consigning Casimiro Monteiro to a coffin.
Casimiro Monteiro tried to build a personal fortune. He was
allegedly involved in contraband gold. He built the only
cinema hall in Ponda. He also tried to extort money from
families of certain rich victims.
The fair, tall and handsome son of a leading hardware
merchant died at his hands. Some wealthy businessmen enjoyed
failsafe insurance against high-handedness of colonial
officialdom -- thanks to their idle and bored wives back home.
Knowledgeable sources of the time (the mid-20th century) say
that high society women were invariably enamoured by the
Portuguese military officer's uniform. Hardly surprising
that offspring at times resembled Europeans. A
Portuguese-language ditty was popular in Panjim at the time:
Se todo o cabrão trouxer na ponta do corno um lampião,
Ó minha mãe, ó minha mãe, que grande seria a iluminação!
(If every cuckold donned a lantern at the end of his horn,
Oh mother! Oh mother! How bright would the streets be!)
Consenting husbands/cheating wives and Portuguese casanovas
were one thing. PIDE and Casimiro Monteiro were quite
another -- they were above even the highest ranking military
officer in Goa serving as the Governor-General. There was no
surefire insurance from the PIDE and Casimiro Monteiro!
Downfall of the state terrorist came after he was seriously
wounded in an op. Monteiro and 40 armed secret service
guards took on two AGD activists Bapu Gawas and Bala Desai at
Hali-Chandel in Pernem. The Goan duo fought valiantly,
killing five and injuring Monteiro, before they were shot
dead. Monteiro went to Portugal for medical treatment.
Military officials whose local paramour families had fallen
victim and a former PIDE colleague in Goa complained about
Monteiro's misdeeds to the Goa Governor-General. He was
accused of 50 crimes in Goa alone. After due enquiry,
Monteiro was dismissed by the Ministry of Overseas (Colaço,
2017, Pages 33-34).
He was later reinstated and continued his
activities, especially in liquidating political
opponents of the ruling regime, both in Portugal
and Portuguese Africa. On 20 June 1964, some bombs
went off in Goa. It was said to be the handiwork
of Casimiro Monteiro and Ismail Dias, a Goan
settled in Portugal.
To trace the genealogy of Casimiro Monteiro, one needs to go
back to the 19th century when a Portuguese Brazilian,
Francisco Xavier Alvares Castro Roso (pronounced Rôzo),
fleeing the long arm of the law for an alleged major crime,
bought a ship, packed it with merchandise and sailed for Goa.
He sold the merchandise and the ship, and settled
in Ponda. Roso and his wife Maria Natalia de Jesus
Lourenço had four daughters. According to this
author's nonagenarian friend from Curtorim, Rafael
Viegas, one daughter married an Antao from Chandor,
the second a Menezes from Raia, the third an Amaral
from Ponda and the youngest -- Maria Florencia da
Piedade de Araujo Alvares Castro Roso, born in
Margao -- married José Teles Jordão Monteiro, a
Ponda-based Second Sergeant.
The 'Teles Jordão Monteiro' hailed from Guarda in Portugal.
José was born in Chaves-Portugal circa 1875. When
transferred he shifted with his wife to Panjim. It was here
that Casimiro, their fourth son, and Anibal, also a PIDE
agent but a straight man, were born.
(Part genealogy is borrowed from Dr. Jorge Forjaz and Dr.
José Francisco de Noronha in Luso-Descendentes da Índia
Portuguesa, Vol. III, Fundação Oriente, Pages 873 to 880 --
thanks to Adv. Fernando Colaço). Roso was changed to 'Rosa'
in the name of Casimiro Monteiro. He was legally wedded to a
Scotswoman, daughter of a butcher he worked for when in
England.
Portuguese author Dalila Cabrita Mateus in her 2004 book, A
PIDE/DGS na guerra colonial (1961-1974) (PIDE/DGS in the
colonial war (1961-1974), DGS is acronym for Direção Geral de
Segurança or Directorate General of Security, of which PIDE
was an arm) says that Monteiro was born 20 December 1920 in
Panjim, Goa.
He enlisted in the Portuguese Army, which he deserted and
fled to Italy, joining the Foreign Legion. [See the sketch
by Adv. Colaço, above.] Around 1950, he returned to
Portugal. He joined the PIDE and eventually arrived in Goa.
When he left for medical treatment in Portugal, a
former PIDE colleague denounced his brutality and
violence and presented material stolen by Monteiro
in London. GNR Colonel Miguel Mota Carmo conducted
the inquiry, and after examining evidence of
various crimes -- torture, murders, extortion and
rape of women committed in Goa -- ordered the
arrest of Monteiro, who was incarcerated at the
Trafaria military prison in Portugal.
Eventually acquitted, Dalila Cabrita Mateus tells us that
Casimiro Monteiro was recruited by Hermes Oliveira for the
post-1961 Operation Namasté meant to organize armed
resistance to the Indian Union and liquidate the opponents of
Portugal.
Monteiro arrived in Goa and unleashed bomb terrorism and
executed Goans who had collaborated with India. He managed
to get a Goan freedom fighter to a meeting near the Daman
border, pretending to convince him to take control of the
erstwhile Portuguese territories as governor. The Goan was
overpowered, gagged and tied to the back of a horse, but was
released on orders from Lisbon (Mateus, 2004, Pages 172-174).
After Op Namasté, Monteiro returned to Portugal in November
1964 and, though not qualified, became a PIDE brigade leader.
He routinely bumped off opponents of the regime. He
travelled with Rosa Casaco to Paris, tailing the former
Portuguese Air Force chief, Gen. Humberto Delgado (who had
crossed swords with Salazar in the 1958 Presidential
election, taken political asylum in Brazil in 1959 and later
shifted to Europe).
Casimiro Monteiro shot Gen. Delgado and strangled his
Brazilian secretary, both to death, on 13 February 1965 near
Badajoz in Spain. He went to Tanzania in February 1969 and
got Eduardo Mondlane, the Mozambican leader and President of
Frelimo. In the wake of Portugal's Carnation Revolution in
1974, Monteiro fled to political asylum in South Africa and,
almost blind and destitute, died unsung at Richards Bay in
Natal on 25 January 1993.
--
Excerpted from revised text of the book, Patriotism In
Action: Goans in India's Defence Services by Valmiki Faleiro,
first published in 2010 by Goa,1556 (ISBN:
978-93-80739-06-9). Revised edition awaits publication.
