Like Isha Mantri and many others before her, Roshan Walson met his death, by the sea, after a night out last weekend. Always, the trigger if not the cause of these deaths – according to people on the scene and in the know – is the intake of drugs, in varying quantities.
In the records of the police and in the GMC, which conducts post mortems, the cause of death is always ‘reserved’, pending the vicera examination report. Immediately, after the death, the police gives a deadline of a month. The month comes and goes and many months pass thereafter. By this time the media moves onto other stories or other deaths.
The same story will be repeated in the case of Walson, a student from Bangalore who came to Goa with friends and family and was seen at a night club in Vagator. His body, according to reports, was found last Sunday, a 100 meters from the night club. And unlike in the case of Isha Mantri who collapsed at an electronic festival during the year-end madness which engulfs North Goa, Walson’s post mortem report did confirm the presence of some drug. The story then takes a familiar turn, with the autopsy not being able to determine the drug present. The vicera will again be sent to Karnataka and the case will go into an abyss of uncertainty, as has happened in Mantry’s case. Here, the Goa police sent a viscera sample of Mumbai-based fashion designer to a forensic science laboratory in Bangalore for a chemical analysis and histopathological examination in the first week of January and was expected to get the report – the DIG of police said – by the end of January. It’s March now and we are none the wiser, of the official cause of Mantry’s death though drug overdose seems to be the most obvious possibility.
However, in Walson’s case, his friends have actually told the police that Walson bought drugs from a local contact, whose number was given to him by a friend in Mumbai who had visited Goa recently. Meanwhile, the cosy boys club of the police and the GMC, acting often on the instructions of the state government, keep the final cause of death as “reserved” as long as possible, thanks to the extremely overloaded universe of forensic tests with laboratories bursting at their seams with the quantum of samples they need to go through.
While the wait happens in each case till time closes the chapter even if the police officially doesn’t, life goes on in Goa. The local drug pushers meet anywhere between Parra and Arpora, the supplies happen, the known shacks and clubs are not devoid of doorstep deliveries, the police get their hafta and recover their investments they made to get posted to certain coastal police stations. Meanwhile dead bodies pile up. The bodies are taken away by families for the last rites while crucial body parts are sent for chemical tests and as they say in police lingo “the matter ends”.
Roshan Walsons death will surely not be a wakeup call, and dismissed as yet another instance of brash young people letting themselves go in Goa. From time to time the system will get questioned with an MLA leading a group of people to destroy one night club for allegedly indulging in prostitution, and it will be clear that the target is close to the MLA’s rival. The counter allegations will then flow with rivals alleging the MLA’s close links with dubious nightclubs and places and the narrative is lost is political mudslinging. On the sidelines, Ishan Mantrys and Roshan Walsons will die.
The Goa government is not serious about the war on drugs. Many of the players in the system of drug running are involved and are protected by people in government and the police system is completely compromised. Former Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar had once told Herald, “If I dismiss every corrupt police man or officer, I will have no force left”.
The way forward is to make this a huge issue and a campaign led by people who will take electoral decisions based on the government’s war on drugs. In a democracy you cannot get an alien system to cleanse when the basic DNA of governance is corrupted. There is no substitute to people’s anger which is still not visible on the streets of coastal North Goa because we suspect very strongly that many are beneficiaries of the current system. People must understand that unless the war on drugs is won, there will nothing left to fight for, or live for.
