GERARD DE SOUZA
gerard@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Have the Ponda police arrested a Bhoma youth mistakenly, just for being in love with a girl who committed suicide? Did the violence, the girl faced at the hands of her matka bookie father, over their love affair, lead her to take the extreme step?
In November, a young girl hailing from Ponda taluka, all of 16 years of age, hung herself from the rafters of her small house at Banastarim. While the police have arrested one Krishna alias Kishan Gaude, 21, of Bhoma since the girl loved him, they have not produced any conclusive evidence against him, forcing him to languish in jail since November.
What is even more surprising is that the police have slapped the draconian section 377 (unnatural sex) of IPC, which was recently upheld by the Supreme Court, all on the basis of what is believed to be a false and flimsy complaint by the girl’s father against the boy.
However, the primary cause of the girl’s suicide, locals and neighbours say, is her own father who claims he is politically connected. He would beat her black and blue, even to the point of making her unconscious, confine her to a room and didn’t even allow her to pursue further studies after completing Class XII, due to her love affair with Gaude.
Herald visited the localities where both the residences of the accused and the girl are located and stitched together a story of the events leading to the unfortunate suicide of the girl.
Around four months prior to the suicide, in August, the girl, shows up at the house of the boy in Bhoma completely broken and in tears and squats herself there refusing to go back to her own home.
“She wailed inconsolably and said she would, under no circumstances go back to her home as her father, who often drinks and beats her incessantly, locks her up in a room, occasionally denies her food and in effect treats her as his prisoner,” the mother of Kishan who was at home at the time said.
“We had no option but to call her family as she cannot stay here, especially since she was a minor and we would have ended up in trouble,” the mother said adding that she only acted on the advice of neighbours.
First to arrive on the scene that day, was the girl’s mother who arrived by hired motorcycle and asked the girl to return home. She slapped her daughter, warning her that if her father arrives on the scene the thrashing she would receive would be far worse.
The girl instead cowered on the floor trembling, but refused to go back to her home, knowing only too well what awaited her. “She (the mother) even asked me, whether I would want ‘such’ a girl as a daughter-in-law,” the mother said.
When all else failed, the mother then called the girl’s father who arrived by rickshaw after dark and “began mercilessly beating his daughter, kicked her, grabbed her by the hair, beat her and dragged her away by the hair when she was unconscious.” The boy’s mother even demonstrated the state the girl was left in saying, she noticed the girl was so weak from the beating she had lost consciousness and her rolled her eyes.
All this while, the boy’s family and neighbours looked on saying that they were too afraid to act or call the police. “We didn’t know things would come to this,” an uncle of the boy said, when asked why a police complaint was not filed there and then. The girl was then taken in the rickshaw back home.
With that attempt of running from her father failed, not too long thereafter, the girl on September 16, of her own accord walked into the Ponda police station saying that she no longer wants to stay at home and that “she wants to stay with the boy.”
The police summoned a social worker Shirley Dias from Ponda. Speaking to Herald, Dias confirmed that the girl ventured to the police station on her own and despite more than three hours of her convincing, refused to return to her home.
The Ponda Police then sent the girl to Apna Ghar with a letter requesting that she be admitted saying “the father appeared at the police station and reported that his daughter is creating problems in the house and moving here and there without the knowledge of her parents and not going to school and she is refusing to stay with her parents. The parents requested to admit the girl to Apna Ghar.”
The girl was admitted at Apna Ghar, appeared before the Child Welfare Committee and was discharged a day later and sent home. No action was initiated against the father.
Dias said that it was the “stubbornness of the girl that could be one of the reasons why the father was cruel to her.”
On November 16, at around 9.30 am the girl made what was to be her final call to the boy. What conversation transpired between the two is not known, but an hour later at 10.30 am she was found hanging from the rafters of her home.
She had on several occasions earlier threatened to commit suicide, blaming her separation from her friend and the “tyranny” of her father as being unbearable.
That the Ponda police’s is apparently clueless about the sins of the father and that they have not acted against him is understandable since there is no official complaint registered against the father.
What is however, inexplicable is the arrest of the boy who is now serving his second month in jail and is facing charges of “carnal intercourse against the order of nature (section 377 of IPC, which is a non-bailable offence), assaulting a woman with criminal force, insult, criminal intimidation, and child abuse and sexual assault on a minor. His only “crime” being that the girl loved him.
The charges were made against him on the basis of a complaint filed by the father of the girl more than 15 days after her death on November 30. Shirley Dias believes that the complaint of the father is false. “The boy is innocent, I know that he has done nothing wrong. Instead the father is known to be an alcoholic, an intimidator and claiming to have political influence besides also being a matka bookie.
Yet, today, he walks free and a young 20-year-old boy is languishing in jail.
Herald attempted to contact the Ponda Police PSI Suraj Gauns, the investigating officer in this matter for his comments, but he was unavailable.
