Yes, we are conducting a media trial on Father Bismarque’s death

Yes, we are conducting a media trial on the mysterious death of Goa’s fiery activist priest Father Bismarque Dias who took on the cozy club of mine owners, real estate sharks, the government and even sections of the police force, including elements in the Old Goa police station.

We are conducting it openly, bravely, consistently and intensely because we, unlike, armchair columnists and writers, who we dare say, haven’t been anywhere near St Estevam, feel it’s important to keep this pressure on for the sake of justice. In shot those who are pontificating and sermonizing haven’t been to the spot and spoken to those who should be spoken to. This needs time, energy and dogged persistence. If at all there are two sides to a debate then those who are opposed to a media trial and are parroting the police version should be at least as well prepared with ground level information by going to the ground.

Before we explain where exactly the holes in the investigation are, there is at least one silver lining if not the whole cloud. The investigation is finally in the hands of the Kartik Kashyap led Crime Branch. While this unit may not be Scotland Yard, the FBI or the Mosad, it surely is the best we have in Goa with a big caveat. The Crime Branch must be left alone to do their job and not be controlled.

But they do have a task on their hands. Playing catch up and trying to catch the trail of police investigation done up far, and steering it onto a credible investigative track, is a tall order. The best evidences, the most rudimentary blocks on which an investigation can be built up have been tampered with or destroyed. As far as circumstantial evidence goes, detailed questioning and grilling key players – some of whom have not even been questioned – may be compromised because those doing the cover up would have polished and coordinated their scripts by now.

The foundation of this investigation is not about accepting the overwhelming outpouring of sentiment that a man who was fighting the system was put down by those who milk and control the system. While Herald understands and supports this sentiment, it also believes that a ruthless investigation must prove this sentiment right. But there cannot be any compromise on not treating this as a murder investigation. This is simply because of the profile of Father Bismarque, the threats to his life and the fact that he recorded those threats.

We are speaking to stakeholders, who are incidentally citizen’s, but doing the journalism ourselves and not through nameless out of office writers, because we know how to ask the right questions. And most importantly, we have not concluded that Father Bismarque died of simple drowning. But nor are we concluding that he was killed. But with circumstantial evidence and information at our command, we feel there is irrefutable reason why this has to be investigated as a murder case because the cost of not doing so is far greater than pursuing the accidental drowning theory. An investigation carried out as a murder and proven to be not so is less damaging than investigating it as just another accident, and later figuring out that this was a cold blooded killing in the first place.

The challenge before the Crime Branch is to get what is not there. 1)Vital fingerprints from caps of Kingfisher bottles lying at Vaichi Vaat, the vast open area in St Estevam where people come to walk, where Father Bismarque had his first round of beers with the two young boys Darren (18) and the 17-year-old (name withheld). 2) Finger prints on the beer bottles at the babal manos (sluice gates) which were crudely picked up. 3) The fact that the bottles were not just broken but crushed to pieces was not accounted for. 4) The person accused of threatening Father Bismarque has not even been questioned once. 5) One of the boys, the 18 year old Darren spent two nights before Father Bismarque’s death with a common friend Joyson, but his parents had no idea. Darren spent the whole of November 5 with Father Bismarque with his worried mother looking for him. Joyson received Darren’s mothers call at 20.30 hours on November 5 and yet didn’t tell her that her son was with him till late that afternoon before he dropped him off at the other boys house (17). It is this network of so many young boys, all known to each other who were somehow connected to the circumstances of this case, is unnerving. 6) We now come to two sets of people who are extremely crucial to the investigation who the Goa Police have actually kept at a convenient distance. The first: On the morning of November 6, Father Bismarque’s sister-in-law Maria called on his mobile at 9.15 am. The call was answered by the sluice gate operator (reffered to as Mansekar, because of his job of operating the manos -sluice gate) who informed Maria that Father Bismarque’s clothes were on the ground and his mobile phone too, which he has answered. Now this man has gone completely out of focus. He has to be questioned on exactly the number and description of the clothes, their exact location and now most importantly whether a jockey vest was a part of the clothes heap. Importantly, isn’t it surprising that the man did not immediately rush to Father Bismarque’s family but waited for a call on his phone to tell his family member that he was missing? Second: The boys who took a canoe out to look for Father Bismarque and found his body in the river. They need to be questioned on the exact spot and the position of the body.

The air on the island of St Estavam, perennially struck with divinity and grace, has suddenly been hit by a storm of depression. And that reached a peak on the afternoon of last Tuesday when a blood-stained vest was found less than 100 metres from where his body was found. Very surprisingly the vest, identified as Father Bismarque’s by his other sister-in-law Lourdes – who used to wash his clothes – was found by the road which led away from the forest route that Father Bismarque ostensibly took to reach the hut at the babal manos (sluice gate) where he had his final round of drinks before he died. While one news report said that the vest was floating on the river (which is so not true and a figment of a very fertile imagination) and another article which was written in the tone of a forensic expert commenting on the order of the blood spots (without even going to the spot) and deducing that this couldn’t have come from a wound.

We are very humble ground-level reporters who ask commonsense questions. If this was Father Bismarque’s vest, would he have taken this piece of inner clothing and placed it 100 meters away from his other clothes and then dived in? Doesn’t the presence of his vest (through identification) with what are clearly blood spots, far away from the rest of the heap, give enough reason to point further to the murder angle and investigate it rather than rush to cast doubts on how the vest reached there? The doubts if at all, should lead to probing this as foul play not discounting it as its being done. Strange are the ways of some writers turned forensic experts.

We expect the Crime Branch to ask the same commonsense questions. The simplest truths are sometimes the harshest. But they are still truths, not concocted fiction of nameless writers. And if it takes at least one media trial conducted by Herald to ask these simple questions so be it. After all one of Goa’s bravest sons cannot just die with no investigation to figure why he did.

When people like Father Bismarque die, in the manner he has died, life cannot just go on.