PANJIM: Two brothers and their wives were arrested on charges of keeping a woman captive in a room for nearly 15 years, and bailed out soon thereafter. Crime Branch SP Kartik Kashyap said that Ravindra Verlekar, his wife Amita, Mohandas and his wife Anita were arrested and bailed out since the offence is bailable.
The woman was freed on Tuesday evening after a team of women police and NGO Bailancho Saad raided her maternal house in Candolim where the two brothers and sisters-in-law had allegedly confined her. The “malnourished” 50-year-old, police said, lived in darkness in the small unsanitary room, without light fittings and was neither allowed to connect with the outside world nor use toilet facilities.
After the raid, the family was summoned to the women police station in Panjim where they were questioned for several hours and then placed under arrest.
The Institute of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour (IPHB) – where the survivor was taken for examination following claims by the accused that she was mentally unsound – concluded that the woman is ‘not psychologically unfit’. A senior police officer told Herald that the IPHB report was one of the grounds for the arrest of the accused as it established they were lying and misleading the police investigation.
“At the time of the raid, the accused persons told us that the woman was kept in the room because she was mentally unsound and could possibly harm others if let free. We thereafter took her to the IPHB for a test. The report ascertained she is not psychologically unfit,” said the officer.
However, IPHB doctors have recommended ‘some general tests’ in the OPD. “She doesn’t need admission in the IPHB, expect for a few general tests like IQ,” the source revealed. Similarly, doctors at Goa Medical College and Hospital also recommended some medical tests and prescribed medicines as she was found ‘malnourished’ and ‘feeble’. The traumatised victim is presently lodged in a shelter home.
She is unable to speak clearly, Bailancho Saad Convener Sabina Martins told Herald stating that the NGO would request the police to allow them to counsel the woman. “She is mentally fit but being in trauma and the circumstances she endured all these years, she is unable to speak properly. She needs counseling and we will request the police to allow us access to the shelter home to help her come out of the dark past,” she said.
The preliminary investigation also reveals that the woman was subjected to alleged assaults during the initial years of the confinement.
