Team Herald

PANJIM: Dapper to a fault, soft spoken to the point of his words coming out in whispers and effortlessly polite, Pinky Lawande is the sophisticated arm of the Digambar Kamat camp, winning friends and cultivating people. With a hotel in Panjim – La Capitol, construction outlets and shops, Pinky (hardly anyone knows him as Gourish), preferred the Café Coffee Day in the heart of Panjim as his work, and shall we say his deal making place.

In the full term of the Digambar rule, “Pinky”, Digambar Kamat’s brother-in-law, was a parallel power center but unlike other power center’s he went about his business very quietly without being in your face. And for those who dealt with him, he got things done without having to utter a single expletive, beginning sentences with a “Please” or a “Can you” and never forgetting to say thank you at the closure of a task.

But during the closing years of the Digambar Kamat rule, Lawande was in the periphery of controversies surrounding massive conversion of land during the run-up to the now scrapped Regional Plan of 2011. And the word was that if the brother-in-law was on your side, “work” would get done.

From project advice to recruitments, the refrain was that if “Pinky bab” was with you, all projects would get a green signal.

However, he has never been charged for any financial irregularities or been a subject of any criminal investigation but with the Crime Branch and the Enforcement Directorate striking deep, the actions of the Digambar years will be put to scrutiny.

Sources at Crime Branch said that the links in the JICA bribery investigation have reached the doorstep of Gourish (Pinky) Lawande. CB SP Karthik Kahyap said, “Everybody is within the ambit of the investigations. Investigation might have reached him.”