The Children's Court headed by South Goa District Judge A.D.Salkar is expected to pronounce its order on 24th December on the maintainability of the criminal complaint filed by Mr. Anthony Frois uncle of the minor girl allegedly molested by Ribandar Parish Priest Fr. Newton Rodrigues. orders.
Dec 24th will coincidentally be a year when before the X'mas midnight mass Fr. Newton Rodrigues allegedly took the 13-year-old Ribandar girl to a room in the church on the pretext of taking confession and molested her. The complaint, which is the first of its kind before the recently constituted Children's court, has been filed by Mr. Frois against the Parish Priest in view of the police dragging its feet in filing the charge sheet against the accused priest. Fr. Newton Rodrigues is the first Roman Catholic Priest in Goa against whom the police have registered an F.I.R for an offence of molestation. The Ribandar Church molestation case was also one of the bone of contentions in the recent row between Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar and former DGP Mr. Amod Kanth with the DGP refusing to relent to political pressures not to charge sheet the Parish priest. The DGP had reportedly taken a very firm stand that nobody is above the law. A contempt of Court petition filed against Inspector Mrs. Ezilda D' Souza for not complying with her statement is already pending before the Panaji Bench of the Bombay High Court.
