The Goa police has had a chequered history of many of its men in uniform, soiling it both literally and figuratively. From allegations of recovered drugs disappearing from the ‘malkhana’ with “rats having eaten drugs” bandied as the reason, taking haftas from pimps and sex workers, getting a rescued sex victim to perform oral sex in a police station to indulging in oral sex in a police jeep, this force has seen it all and been shamed by it.
And let us state this loud and clear. There are many officers who proudly wear the uniform and take on the forces that shame the police force. It is they who feel the most let down when their so called brother officers, taint the force in such a manner that questions are asked of their profession in civil society. So let there be no mistake, the Goa police, from within, lives with the pain of the actions of its own men. Thus when a rescued prostitution victim named a former PI of Calangute Nilesh Rane and constable Vinod Naik of demanding sexual favours and getting them, among other illegal acts, there was no element of shock but of disgust.
However, the actions of the police force, at various levels, in protecting these two policemen, has dealt a body blow to any serious effort in ridding the system of men like Rane and Naik. The reasons could be many. Protecting another officer is the most natural one. It could also emanate from the urgent need to keep an act of criminal behaviour by a man in uniform under wraps. The Anjuna police, which rescued the victim girl, did not name PI Rane and Constable Naik in the FIR. But it did something else which was clearly out of the ordinary. It apparently gave a go ahead to the protective home where the victim girl was kept, to release her. The consequence of this action was that the woman left for West Bengal and therefore beyond the immediate reach of further investigation. The honourable thing to do in this case would have been to ask the girl to participate in the investigation further to just elaborate on her statements and expose the police, pimp, sex worker nexus, in the northern belt.
Having said that, a degree of pro activeness was shown when the Special Branch conducted its own investigation and by and large concluded that the actions of Rane and Naik were along the lines of what the victim has mentioned in her statement. However, when the report of the Special Branch was submitted to the Director General of Police, he preferred to order a Departmental Enquiry instead of acting on the report of the Special Branch. It is possible that DGP Muktesh Chander, may have a perfectly plausible explanation for this but this isn’t prima facie staring at us in the face. This is more so since Rane still serves as a PI of Sanguem and Naik is posted in Saligao.
Irrespective of how this argument pans out, it simply cannot be acceptable that when an inquiry conducted by a specialized arm of the force has prima facie indicted them, they are allowed to be in service. At the very least, pending investigations, both these policemen should be kept under suspension and their names included in the FIR linked to the sex racket. If the Departmental Enquiry, now ordered, for reasons best known to the police top brass, clears them, they will be reinstated. In fact the Chief Minister, himself has led by example by reinstating his brother-in-law who was caught accepting a bribe of Rs 1 lakh, and that too in the very same department and in the same post.
The cleansing up of the police force is needed for a better and a confident civic society. But it cannot be stressed enough that it is needed even more for a stronger and more confident police force, which is weighed down with ego battles, conflicts within and deep political interference and affiliations. In a canvas littered with these negatives, the morale of the upright police officer in Goa is at an all time low. How can the government expect proper investigations and effective functioning when the good apples struggle to be in a basket of rotten ones? To cleanse the system, the police must have the courage to weed out its rotten apples. The Goa police must do this for its own good men.
