------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Documented by Goa Desc Resource Centre Ph:2252660 Website: www.goadesc.org Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Press Clippings on the web: http://www.goadesc.org/mem/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------- Cop hurt in PMC market tenants agitation ------------------------------------------------------------- A police constable was injured in the stone pelting incident near the Panaji Municipal Corporation building when a morcha led by the 109 PMC Market Tenants Samitee this afternoon was staged in support of their demands for the allotment of shops on the ground floor of the second phase of the New market complex.
The police on seeing their colleague bleeding profusely through the nose, used mild force with canes to disperse the agitators and arrested around 15 association members. All the arrested persons were bailed out late night.
The situation became tense when one of the protesters was pulled inside the PMC building from the crowd on suspicion and allegedly beaten up by the police and confined to the building for nearly 45 minutes.
The Saligao MLA and the Lok Sabha candidate contesting on the Nationalist Congress Party ticket from North Goa, Dr Wilfred de Souza, alongwith the former MLA, Ms Fatima D'Sa and Mr Surendra Furtado arrived on the scene and pacified the agitators and asked them to submit a memo of demands to him in his office and urged them to disperse besides assuring the agitators to look into their genuine grievances.
All the agitators dispersed and later went to the police station and waited for the release of their arrested members which include Messrs Javed Motiwala, Hamdu Motiwala, Chandrakant Kerkar alias Babu, Abdul Karim, Shaikh Iqbal, Shaikh Noor, Gaffar Motiwala, Shaikh Akil, Audhooth Naik, Shaikh Mustafa, Raghunath Mandrenkar, Shaikh Nizaam, Tejab Mohammad, Mohsin Shaikh and Ms Mohsina Shaikh.
Earlier the morcha which was led by the PMC market tenants at around 10.30 in the morning after wending its way through the city streets gathered at the CCP building. They waited for the commissioner, Mr Sanjit Rodrigues, to come down and speak to them.
Later a delegation of six met the commissioner who gave a patient hearing and sought 30 days to redress their grievances but the agitated leaders and the crowd refused and demanded an assurance in writing, which he declined to give.
When the talks ended in a fiasco the leaders came out of the building and shouted slogans against the commissioner and anti-corporation slogans rented the air. The commissioner and the PMC chairman were escorted by the police to their cars amid shouting slogans by the agitators.
At this juncture, a solid laterite stone hit the constable, Mr Vinod Assolkar on the nose causing fracture to the nasal bone.The police on suspicion pulled one of the youth from the striking crowd and allegedly tore his shirt and beat him up and the Maruti Gypsy bearing registration number GGG 747 which was used to lead the morcha was also attached by the police alongwith the stone. The police officials and others on duty used mild cane charge and arrested the leaders and put them behind bars. ------------------------------------------------- The Navhind Times 3/4/04 page 3 ------------------------------------------------
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