The State is slipping into a morass, where to emerge from will be a most difficult task. The suspected drug-related death on the eve of the tourism season opening has done little to boost the State’s image, instead it has taken Goa’s reputation further down a few notches. A day before the season opened, Shashank Sharma from Hyderabad, who was holidaying in Goa died on Sunday due to a suspected drug overdose at Anjuna beach in North Goa.
A cursory look at the available reports of the death point out that Sharma visited a club at Anjuna at 1.30 pm on Sunday and was accompanied by his brother and another friend. At 2.30 pm he went out and returned half an hour later and fainted; hours later, he died. According to the doctor at the Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology of Goa Medical College, Sharma died due to an overdose of a substance that is yet to be identified. Police have registered a case on unnatural death, claim the death was due to fits or seizure, and await the report of the viscera to ascertain the cause of death. Surprisingly the police said they were told by the family that the youth used to smoke and was not under control. Is this information relevant to the investigation that it should be released to the media? Or is there, as a Anjuna resident alleged, an attempt to cover up the cause of the death? There are allegations that this club is known for drugs and this was not the first incident where a youth has died there.
Further shocking, is the manner in which the chairman of Goa Tourism Development Corporation, Nilesh Cabral, reacted to the death, saying that ‘these things happen in every tourism country and state’. He did, however, qualify that there is need to control it, but the very fact that the GTDC chairman, who is now a minister in the government responded so casually to the death, indicates a complete lack of concern to ensuring the clean image of the State where tourism is concerned.
It is now imperative that the crackdown on the drug trade has to be upped. Cabral’s further statements that, “Incidents like death due to drug overdose should not happen. I accept the fact that it should not happen and precautions should be taken. But you cannot monitor every single person coming to Goa. Humanly, it is not possible,” are not the solution. Not only should drug overdose deaths not happen, even the trade in drugs should not. Saying that drug overdose deaths should not happen, is accepting the fact that the drug trade does exist in Goa. The government’s objective should be to clean Goa of the narcotics menace, if it indeed wants to give Goa a clean image.
There appear to be attempts being made to cover up incidents that are not palatable to the dispensation, or those that cast a shadow on the State. The formalin in fish incident is one example, there are also question marks being raised on the probe in the blunder of GMC releasing the wrong body for cremation and this case could be another. This is not the fist suspected drug overdose death in the State. There have been others in the past, that as the State awaits the viscera report that takes months to come, are forgotten and set aside, when another incident of interest occurs.
Will the police tell us the cause of Shashank Sharma’s death? And if it is due to drug overdose, will the investigation turn to discover the source of drugs? These are questions that, in a State where governance is taking a beating, only time will answer.
