Team Herald
SIRSAIM: This is Goa. Arguably one of the most advanced States in India. Less than 10 kms from the village is the Tivim station the main stop in North Goa for tourists.
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Tourists alight at Tivim to go off to the famous beaches and party zones of Goa.
A few kilometres from Tivim to Sirsaim, through the interior village roads, the universe takes you back by over a century. Goa is numb. And neither its people nor its government have actually absorbed what just happened in of Chapel Vaddo, Sirsaim. on eve of Independence Day.
A five-month-old infant girl was murdered by her own parents using a chapatti rolling wooden apparatus to beat the child to death.
The Colvale Police have arrested the parents Sudin Gondlekar (42), the father of the deceased child, and Arminda Fernandes (32), the mother under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, on charges of killing her.
As dusk settled, this reporter reached the village and went to check out the home where Sudin and Arminda lived, the purported scene of crime. The house was not surprisingly locked.
The home next door had lights on but no one seemed to be there. There was not a sound around these homes and as dusk turned to night the silence grew deeper.
Accused mother was under psychiatric treatment but had stopped her medicines
Police informed that the mother of the deceased child is a patient of IPHB and was undergoing treatment however the since the time of her daughter’s birth, she had stopped her treatment and consumption of medicines due to which, she use to have a disturbed and unstable mind as a result the couple use to have scuffle and arguments. Sometimes the mother use to even walk out of the house at odd hours.
The father who is a coconut plucker by profession is a native of Pernem and since it was an inter-community marriage they were staying in a rented house away from the native home.
PI Somnath Majik informed that the couple was produced before the JMFC judge on Monday. The father is remanded two police custody while the mother will be lodged at IPHB Centre, Bambolim. Couple was also sent for forensic medical, and reports are awaited. Though the couple was placed under arrest in murder case, they have not yet confessed their involvement in the crime however changing their statements to protect each other.
Police suspect that while having an argument, out of anger the mother would have killed the child.
According to police, the couple had initially decided to dispose of the body discreetly and the wife was pressurising her husband to plan it that way. However, the husband eventually decided to approach the police station with the infant in a basket.
It can be recalled that the postmortem of the deceased girl is scheduled for Tuesday and only after the PM report, the exact cause of the death will be revealed.
The exact motive of this absolutely heinous, inhuman and unbelievable crime is unknown but those carrying out the probe point to apparently family pressures and taunts that the mother faced after delivering her second daughter. However, Herald has not independently verified this and is therefore outing this out as absolute fact.
But the cruel irony of the killing of the girl child happening at a time when the Prime Minister of the country, in his Independence Day address said that the “mantra of unity cannot reverberate unless the son and daughter are equal’, cannot be missed.
