----------------------------------------------------- Do GOACAN a favour, circulate this email to your family members, relatives, neighbours and friends. Help others be better informed CONSUMERS. ------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- Documented by Goa Desc Resource Centre (GDRC) Email: [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------- MAHANAND MURDERS: A Shameful Police Story ------------------------------------------------------- MAHANAND Naik has confessed to killing a fifth woman. There are pointers, some weak, some strong, that in the past 15 years or so, he has killed no less than 18 girls, most of them in their twenties and coming from lower middle class families.
It is one of the most barbaric and gruesome stories Goan people at large are confronted with. A man has suddenly been found, according to his confession to police, to have murdered many women. But the chain of murders puts the Ponda police and its criminal investigation under a prickly scanner. It is intriguing that in none of the murder cases in the past 15 years the police could identify the killer and frame charges against him. The cases remained unresolved. Could it be because the victims came not from well- off families? Did the police not even use elementary tracking means such as a sniffer dog? What can really be an explanation for the police not taking the disappearance or death of such a large number of women seriously? Was it political patronage? That seems highly unlikely as Mahanand is a man of very low station and has been found to be living life on his own doing sundry work and not investing any effort to build political contacts. Is it because the police officers that were given charge of the investigation were highly inefficient? But then what about those superior officers who are entrusted with the responsibility of regularly (at least monthly) monitoring the progress of detection in cases especially of heinous crimes like murder and rape? Mahanand's confessions might lead him to the noose, but they are also going to leave the entire police hierarchy also condemned. ------------------------------------------------------- EDITORIAL in The Navhind Times 08/5/09 page 10 ------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- GOA CIVIC AND CONSUMER ACTION NETWORK ---------------------------------------------------------- promoting civic and consumer rights in Goa ---------------------------------------------------------- GOACAN Post Box 187 Margao, Goa 403 601 GOACAN Post Box 78 Mapusa, Goa 403 507 mailto: [email protected] ----------------------------------------------------------
