Team Herald
MERCES: An uncanny silence pervades in Merces over the brutal attack by four local men on a group of Mumbai-based tourists.
Three days after the attack, villages are divided on who instigated the fight. While many prefer to remain silent on the ‘bloody attack’ so as to avoid being dragged into any ‘lafda’, the staff at the restaurant where the trouble began claim there was a fistfight between one of the tourists and prime accused Lawrence Dias before the attack on the bus.
“There was a verbal spat when a tourist’s arm brushed against Dias. They got into a fistfight just outside (the restaurant). We stopped them and another man took Dias away,” Vasant Patil, a senior employee at Hotel Café Hoble, said.
Dias allegedly vowed to take revenge even as onlookers kept their distance, probably aware of the former’s criminal background. Patil said the tourists, including a child, then walked to the bus parked a short distance away. Patil, a Kolhapur native blames the tourists for the fight but could not explain the reason except that one of them brushed his arm against Dias, who was sipping tea. “He is a good man,” he added virtually giving the accused a clean chit.
Dias is a regular customer of the small restaurant, which has CCTVs installed in and around the premises. As usual he had ordered tea, the restaurant cook explained in Hindi. “He (Dias) was the first to enter the restaurant and he ordered tea. The tourists came in later and ordered for vada, buns and tea,” he said adding, “He visits us very often.” Amongst the tourists at the restaurant was a five-year-old child, for whom his mother had ordered milk.
After the brief tussle between the tourists and Dias, what happened next was neither imagined nor did Patil or other staff see what happened. “We heard there was fight in the middle of the road but we didn’t see anything,” the restaurant staff said.
However, the proprietor of the hotel where the group of tourists had stayed, slammed Dias for tainting the image of the village and the State. “He is a notorious man. He has spoilt the name of Merces and Goa. Majority of us (Goans) live on tourism, and this criminal activity must surely have raised apprehensions among other tourists about their safety in Goa. He is driving away tourists,” she said. “I want to leave this village and settle in Panjim,” she said angrily.
Herald attempted to speak to other residents and those running businesses in the vicinity of the place but they refused to be drawn into conversation. “I do not want to fall in the police ‘lafda’. It is better to stay away from the mess,” said a guest house owner, conceding that Dias and his associates, Suraj Golatkar and Vishal Shetye, have again place the spotlight on the village for the wrong reasons.
While the trio is known for their involvement in previous crimes, the absconding accused Sai Kundaikar is a new face to them.
“I was not at the shop but I heard people speaking about some attack on tourists,” said a lady employee at a sweet mart, adjacent to the crime site.
The 47-member group of tourists had arrived in Goa three days before the incident. “They had checked in at midnight. Their stay was for three days only,” said a senior police officer.
