If Assistant Sub Inspector of Police Vithu Naik had his way, she would have been in the confines of the Institute of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour, Bambolim (IPHB). Ironically that may have saved her from getting stripped, dragged, beaten brutally with a wooden object and have chilly powder stuffed into her genitals. This apparently is a regular torture and humiliation routine among certain sections of people in the area from where the victim comes from, played out in the most gruesome manner in the 20-point-programme dwellings in Camurlim, home to xxxxxx families, mostly migrants. At the behest of her tormentors, ASI Naik had approached a local magistrate to allow him to admit her at IPHB, and hence prove that she was unstable. Locals say that Naik was helping her neighbours with whom she was having a running violent dispute to get her out of the way. The court did not allow him, but on hindsight if it did, this widow and a mother would have been spared the torture, agony, hurt and defacement that the hands of the brutes of Camurlim.
Camurlim, has been one of Goa’s greatest shames. Let’s look at the potent mix that went into constructing this. A volatile slum colony full of migrants; some with the backing of powerful local players with political connections, a compliant police, obviously working for the local lords and a hapless woman, a metaphor for the subjugation of the meek at the hands of the powerful. And the powerful, as always have the backing of policemen like Assistant Sub-Inspector Vithu Naik.
“On June 23 after, the widow was mercilessly thrashed by Sonabai, Jorge Sasve and his wife Bharti Sasve who stuffed chili powder in her privates. Naik wrote to the magistrate based on her attackers’ version that she would pelt stones on them. But it was rejected after the victim recounted her ordeal to the magistrate,” another police officer told Herald.
After initially refusing to register a criminal offense on the brutality, the ASI later registered a non-cognizable case despite knowing the severity of the case. Mapusa district hospital, where she was taken to after the incident, has confirmed wounds. The doctors, who treated her, have certified there was indeed chili powder in her private parts.
And let there be no two ways about this. If Tarun Tepal is a rapist under the new rape law which defines rape as the penetration of any orifice with any object then all three, Joirge Save, his wife and his mother are rapists.
The laxity on the part of the Mapusa police went to such extent that though the victim was referred for medical examination in another assault case a day prior to this one – on June 22 – no medical report was collected nor a case was registered against the assailants – allegedly the same, probably emboldening them.
Naik, now stands suspended for refusing to help the bruised woman.
Traumatized daughter – a child who became an adult
But there was one person who stood between the powerful completely taking over. A six-year-old, who became a woman from a girl, an adult from a child, a transformation that was forced upon her by the sheer intensity of the violence inflicted on her mother
The six-year-old phoned the helpline number 1091 asking the police to rescue her mother who was being beaten up before her eyes. The six-year-old borrowed one of her neighbour’s mobile phone to call up the helpline number, which was written down and given to her previously by one helpful neighbour.
In her statement to police, the child has narrated the sequence of events while also claiming that her neighbours often harassed her mother and ‘slapped’ her each time she was seen outside her house or at a tile shop where she works.
Slap on the victim, a bigger slap on our society
The stone pelting was from both sides, sources said, but argue that she would retaliate after she was attacked. The witness has testified that both neighbours pelted stones on each other along with verbal abuse.
“They (referring to the three alleged accused) also slapped her mother whenever they saw her anywhere on the street, and abused her in filthy language,” an officer said quoting from the one-and-half page statement copy.
On the day of the incident, when the mother was called by her neighbours to their house and assaulted, the child first dialed Police Control Room 100.
“She rushed to another neighbour and borrowed their mobile phone dialed 1091 and narrated the incident to the call attendant. She gave her exact residential address for police to locate her house without any difficulty,” the source revealed.
The mother-daughter duo was informed by the NGOs that they should have approached in the earlier incidents to call the helpline numbers in such crisis, in view of police’s laxity towards her previous complaints.
What is Goa left with?
In the end, what is the Goa that cares left with? The same feeling of emptiness and shock that the parents and backward caste villagers felt, when two girls, 12 and 14 of the same family were raped and killed in Badayun in UP. While the Goa violence hasn’t yet got a caste angle, it surely is a result of power play supported by the police. And that is why it fits the conclusion of the report of the humanitarian organization Save the Children India, called the Badayun attack “part of an alarming trend of brutal violence against those from marginalised communities”. Make no mistake; Camurlim in Goa is much closer to Badayun after what has happened to this widow than it is to Mapusa, a geographical distance of 4 kilometres.
THE BRUTES WHO ATTACKED HER HAD SUPPORT STAFF- THE POLICE
ASI Vithu Naik approached the magistrate to admit victim to IPHB Bambolim and call her unstable
Mapusa district hospital confirmed that there was chilly powder in her privates, yet the case remained listed as “non cognisable’
The victim was medically examined in another case of assault by the same assailants a day earlier. That report was not even collected by the police
