The scene is just outside the police headquarters of Goa, in its capital Panjim. It’s an open ground flanked by shops and offices and adjacent to the town’s main police station.
It’s a day before the Prime Minister’s visit to Goa where the security is so watertight that, as a rough translation of famous Hindi saying goes- even a bird can’t flap its wings. It is around late afternoon to early evening. The Herald reporter got a call from a reporter of a vernacular paper, about one person Munnalal Halwai from Vasco going to address a press with regard to land encroachments. The Herald reporter was asked to stay on till the very end because of some “big news” that was supposed to unfold.
Halwai had just started speaking, when in full view of the media, one Bhumi Varak arrived at Azad Maidan, put a garland of chappals’ round his neck, caught him, and sprayed ink from a canister on his face which went to his eyes. Halwai was attacked two days earlier and his vehicle was apparently smashed with rods.
No Home Minister will ever accept something like this happening in his or her State. This is a sign of open disregard for the law and the head of the Home Department who the police report. Setting a strong example by taking the strongest possible action against an abject insult to the system is something that any home minister would want
Let’s now turn to the media: When the paint was sprayed on him at Azad Maidan, aggressively and offensively with the intention to hurt, the electronic media present kept recording it without even pausing for a second to see that there was criminality unfolding front of them which they did not even attempt to stop. And how did some of them know about the “big news” in advance?
Importantly it was only the Herald reporter, who tried to push the attacker away with one arm as his other arm was injured.
Before we go further, we have to call out the media for their shameful complicity in the act by remaining as voyeurs of the act instead of rescuing Munnalal Halwai.
It must be probed how the attacker knew that Halwai would be speaking to the press at a specific venue in Panjim which is neither his home nor the town where the pause of confrontation between the two parties is located.
No State will ever want the law, uniform, and the system to be openly scoffed at
Let us be very clear here. The merits of the original reason, for what is clearly a bloody battle between Halwai and Bhumi Varak and those who are behind him are not the subject of this scrutiny. It is limited to a straight and narrow issue of law and jurisprudence of one person’s safety and protection getting brutally and criminally violated in full public view, almost daring the police of Goa’s capital town to take any action. No State or Home Minister will ever want his government to be disregarded and its law was broken in this manner.
The cause of worry is this: Has the respect and fear of the law both gone?
While the law will take its course and decide if the attack and its aftermath fall in the category of grievous injury or not the cause of worry is somewhere else. A complaint had already been filed against Halwai’s attacker for a previous assault on him in Ponda, only the previous day where he was attacked with a rod and his car smashed.
The audacity of an attacker to attack his target in Ponda and the next day in Panjim speaks of the complete brazenness that the breakers of law have that they can get away. Bhumi Varak was finally arrested on Monday for the Ponda attack case but released within hours on bail, as he continues to be unquestioned for his act of spraying Halwai with paint in front of reporters at Azad Maidan, Panjim.
The media needs to introspect as to what its role really is and should be while carrying out its responsibilities. It cannot become part of the very disease of degeneration of civic values and make footage gathering for eyeballs its only mission, at times at the cost of filming but apparently not stopping an illegal and criminal action.
At the same time, the police need to come with clean hands. The complaint of thrashing of farmer activist Hanumant Parab by the PI and DySP in Valpoi has not been looked at for what will be close to a year. The assault of an advocate which broke his jaw and could have cost his life, by policemen in uniform led to an FIR finally being lodged and sent to the Crime Branch. But there has been no action at all against the cops named and unnamed in the FIR.
Shockingly, policemen from other stations are sending videos to journalists showing that the victim lawyer first hit a policeman. But that cannot justify their actions of police brutality. There is recourse under the law for policemen or anyone for that matter who has been attacked. And an FIR against the lawyer was registered even before the one against the policemen and that too after an intense agitation by lawyers.
Do the police, therefore, have the right to carry out an almost murderous counterattack in an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth policy? Under what section of the law are the police empowered to do this?
No Home Minister or a system would like a very important pillar of governance to look weak and be ridiculed and at the same time elements within the uniformed force mock the very Constitution and law that take an oath to protect.
This course correction is something that should and will be thought of by the Goa government because this is the best time and opportunity for a reset to give the system the power to rule well for the sake of its people.
