While ruling out an agitation at this stage, they insisted that they would act peacefully to avoid any untoward incidents again and that the parish would be taken into confidence.
The group plans to announce their course of action in two days. They prefer keeping their cards close to their chest given that their lives are at stake and wish to tread carefully lest the situation worsens. The situation has changed from three years ago, when an FIR was registered against seven persons and 1,500 unknown people.
“The entire village knows what happened. Forget the village; there were parishioners from other churches and from neighbouring villages like Ambelim and Assolna who were present as most of them had attended a meeting before the incident. They rushed to the church when they heard what happened,” said one of the accused, who did not wish to be named for fear of police taking advantage of their situation.
“We were the ones who actually helped the cops.” said another accused.
He said he was just hanging out near the church when the incident happened and never imagined he would be slapped with serious charges.
Most of the accused are youngsters whose job prospects have been damaged. They give an example of a boy who was about to go on a ship, but his passport was not cleared because of this incident.
Lawyers who met the accused also questioned the assurances given by former chief minister Manohar Parrikar. Villagers questioned Parrikar’s statements on the floor of the Assembly about consulting the Home Department for legal opinion, and if that legal opinion was to file a charge sheet and not withdraw the case as promised.
They recalled that Parrikar, when he visited Velim, had assured to get the case dropped. They wondered if his opinion had changed after the priests did not come out in full support of the BJP during the Lok Sabha elections.
A certain section of the villagers also questioned if the LS and zilla panchayat results in Velim constituency, which were not in favour of the government, had influenced the decision to file the charge sheet at this stage.
