MONDAY, APRIL 29, 2024
Team Herald
CAMURLIM (SALCETE): The high-profile arrest of Chris Costa, from Salcete, on alleged links with drug dealers and suppliers who was ultimately linked to the drug cartel being probed in connection with the Sushant Singh Rajput death case has also brought to the fore a five-year-old drug related death case in Curtorim, which was hurriedly closed by the Goa police.
(Costa was today sent to judicial custody by the Sessions court till September 23)
On April 19, 2015, Chris Costa, known in the records of the Goa police as Chris Periera was present at a birthday party, where two youth allegedly had excessive drugs and were found dead next morning (April 20) at the home of a resident of Maina-Curtorim, the host of the party and whose birthday it was.
The Maina-Curtorim police investigating the case, according to a Herald report of April 2015 ‘found cigarette butts, paper used for smoking and consumption of narcotic drugs, alcohol bottles and other suspicious matter pointing out to drug use at the party’.
Then Deputy Superintendent of Police, South Goa, Mohan Naik, in the report said that the police were investigating the angle of deaths due to alcohol and narcotic drugs overdose.
While the host of the party was arrested immediately, one Mathew Colaco who also disappeared with Chris Pereira, surrendered in six days. Colaco, according to reports allegedly ran a drug racket in Loutolim and had built up a network of peddlers
Chris, however, was never found, though he is very much a local and the family was known to all. Surprisingly, what appeared to be a clear case of drug-related deaths was closed even though all accused were booked under Sections 304 of Indian Penal Code, Section 20(B) (ii) (a), Section 27 and 29. Importantly, no one was booked under the NDPS Act, even though there were enough traces found by the police to narrow this down to a clear case of drug misuse and death due to drugs.
Surprisingly the absconding Chris Pereira was never picked up even though he is a local living in the Camurlim-Loutolim border, on the main road connecting Loutolim to the Margao-Borim bridge highway.
Chris, whose father’s surname was Costa, used his mother’s maiden name Pereira.
According to a couple, Krisna Rathore and his wife, from Karnataka, who live on the ground floor of this house owned by Chris’ mother Maria Pereira, the NCB team had arrived here a few days ago along with Maria, when the process of arresting him had been initiated. Rathore works in the Loutolim cemetery while his wife works as a cleaner and helper at the Loutolim Church.
Police officials contacted were extremely tightlipped about this case with none of them willing to come on record about the case and its aftermath. One of them admitted that Chris was allegedly one of the main suppliers along with Colaco.
A senior official of the South Goa district administration confirmed that the case was closed because the viscera report did not state that there were drugs present.
These facts bring to the fore the grim reality about how the drugs menace has penetrated into the hinterland villages of Goa and more importantly, how the local police have often not pursued investigations, especially against locals.
Look what this has led to. A Goan lad absconding from the police, till the case itself was closed, and very much in Goa gets caught by a national investigating agency for his international drug links, five years later.
