Malkarnekar family yet to receive stolen ornaments

TEAM HERALD

teamherald@herald-goa.com 

MARGAO: When the Pune police busted the Nilesh Chowgule gang on June 23 last year, smiles lit the faces of the Surendra Malkarnekar family, residing at D’Costa chambers, near Clube Harmonia, Margao.

For, the accused had confessed their involvement in the spate of burglaries in Goa, including the one that occurred in Surendra’s house on March 1 earlier the same year.

But, it’s nearly nine months and the Malkarnekar family is running from pillar to post and have knocked the doors of the Margao police and other authorities for return of their gold ornaments. That’s not all. Though the Margao police had claimed to have recovered the gold ornaments in respect of four burglary cases, the Malkarnekar’s are yet to receive the gold ornaments, even as the police have released the recovered gold ornaments to the remaining three complainants.

An agitated Surendra Malkarnekar said the Judicial Magistrate First Class, Margao Saee Prabhudessai had on October 20, 2012 directed the Margao police inspector to release the ornaments weighing about 260 grams to me. ‘Instead of releasing the ornaments to me, the Margao police released the ornaments to three other claimants with court directions”, he said. 

Malkarnekar has now demanded to know why the Margao police did not bring the JMFC’s order releasing the ornaments to him was not brought to the notice of the other JMFCs directing the Margao police to release ornaments to the three other claimants.  “Margao PI Sudesh Naik has conveniently avoided making reference to the proceedings pending before the JMFC court. He was aware of the proceedings pending before the court, but kept the other courts in the dark”, he said.

PI Sudesh Naik, however, submitted to the court there was no deliberate attempt to suppress the facts. He said only 75 gram of property belonged to Malkarnekar, while the remaining property was claimed by complainants in three other crimes. 

“The other three crimes were being investigated by a PSI and since they were also claiming the property, the PSI due to oversight has given the no objection for release of part of the property, which belonged to them. It is due to mistake of facts and oversight that he has submitted the say since he was the IO in all the three crime and there’s nothing to hide or suppress the matter”, PI Naik told the court.