Team Herald
MARGAO: Francis Pereira who has been arrested for desecrating religious monuments in the State had planned to destroy the statue of Ram Manohar Lohia at the Lohia Maidan in Margao just as he planned to damage Abade Faria’s statue in Panjim.
Superintendent of Police South, Arwind Gawas while disclosing this said he had plans to damage a lot more structures and monuments and added that so far he has taken the police team to identify 113 monuments desecrated by him.
According to the police, Francis claimed that he would not take a wink in the night at times as some voices kept urging him that a soul trapped in a monument needed to be released and accordingly, he would destroy a religious monument.
Herald “played” a role in helping the police “gather evidence” against him. Apparently, the police team found a clipping of Herald article(s) with some words scribbled on it at the Guardian Angel Cemetery in Curchorem after it was vandalised.
Francis has reportedly admitted to being an avid reader of the newspaper and further informed that he used to gather clippings of articles of his interest particularly the coverage of the desecrations carried out by him to maintain a record.
“He used to write a lot and probably that is why he used to read the paper and make notes on them,” said SP Gawas. The scribbling on the newspaper clipping matched with that of his writing which was collected from his home soon after his arrest. This (hand written samples matched) apparently to “establish” the fact that he was in the cemetery when it was vandalised, the cops felt.
The nakabandi also guided the cops to him as police personnel noted down the registration number of every vehicle that passed the check post. The police through these records established two things, the first being that whenever any untoward incident occurred at Curchorem, his vehicle never left the place.
Besides, his vehicle number was noted by the officials at the nakabandi in the area closest to the place where desecration took place and that is how they had narrowed down on Francis.
Some police officials said Francis spoke straight without mincing words and reportedly told the police that his brother, an alcoholic, had come to meet him seeking to extract money from him and similarly spoke negatively about another family member.
Francis said he was willing to compensate for the losses he caused through desecration. He probably has a corpus stashed in the banks as he had sold a plot of land for quite a handsome sum. “Do not worry, I shall re-pay for the losses and I have not killed anybody,” he had told the cops during his arrest.
Meanwhile, Francis has been further remanded to six days’ police custody during which the police expect to uncover information of some other monuments damaged by him.
