No sooner has the stench of Formalin Fish Scandal started settling down, there is a new stench in town. Only this one is even worse and all set to get Goa another sobriquet of notoriety, from Rape Capital to now Drug Capital. And this time Goa’s Home Minister Manohar Parrikar better own up his failure to stop Goa turning into a global hub of narcotics manufacture.
The seizure of ‘Skunk weed’ that was being manufactured by advance hydroponics in a ‘lab’ in Siolim over the weekend comes weeks after a huge seizure of Ketamine being manufactured in a factory in Pissurlem Industrial Estate in Sattari is not seeming to be just another freak case. Rather, what is emerging is a series of seemingly unrelated and unconnected dots of narcotic drugs being manufactured across the State which the State’s Home Minister refuses to accept.
Contrast this. In 2010, Parrikar as Leader of the Opposition said this about then Home Minister Ravi Naik’s refusal to interfere in drug trade accusing him saying “Home Minister’s interference indicates that he had interest in protecting someone”. Parrikar had ridiculed Naik saying, “He says that the drugs do come to Goa but they are not consumed here. How can a Home Minister forget that it’s not just consumption but carrying drugs is also an offence in the State?”
In 2018, when Ketamine worth Rs 40 crore was found being manufactured in a Government of Goa owned Industrial Development Corporation plot belonging to senior BJP functionary Vasudev Parab, Parrikar brushed aside saying “You can ask DRI, we don’t have information. DRI has powers to take action and accordingly they have taken action”. Didn’t he himself do what he accused Naik of once L’affaire Ketamine?
A month has elapsed since and Parrikar is yet to answer why his senior party member was never accosted and arrested by Goa Police or its Anti Narcotics Cell. And now that Centre’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence has caught him, why wasn’t the State recommending tougher punishment for Parab and even those cops who had failed to nab him?
There is a rot in the way Goa’s security, law and order are being compromised. Even though the State is small and pretty well police-able by simple yardsticks of management, the way crimes are occurring and allowed to happen is shocking. What is even shameful is that our MLAs and Ministers who get elected from small-sized assembly constituencies have no clue (or are they?) of what goes on in their own backyard. Pissurlem Industrial Estate, where Ketamine was found in a BJP worker’s factory, is on the border of Poriem/Valpoi constituency which is a ruling BJP bastion. Skunk has been found in Siolim which has its MLA from GFP, BJP’s coalition partner. If these are mere coincidences then the Home Minister is not fit to run the Government and must make way to someone more competent, if there is any in his coalition.
The way in which serious crime seems to be coexisting with the Ruling coalition and its friendly MLAs in the Opposition is pretty disturbing. Sanatan Sanstha accused of being the nursery of radicals flourishes just a stone’s throw away from PWD Minister Sudin Dhavalikar’s home in his home constituency. Historically, Indian Mujahideen mastermind Yasin Bhatkal is known to have stayed in the heart of Mormugao and Siolim constituencies, both then ruling BJP’s bastion. The list is endless as narcotics, crime, terror and politics co-exist in an unholy union.
It is time for Goa to ask its ever evasive Home Minister whether he is going to hold his Ministers, MLAs and Party workers and Coalition Partners’ party workers accountable for harbouring crime and criminals and put them behind bars or shield them. Or should Goa shed its succegad ways and weed these elements out? After all, Goans were always peace loving, educated and law-abiding people and we never voted a Government of Crimes and Criminals. Do we have to be the Law on our own and enforce Order, ourselves?
