*MOUSE TRAPPED* AND a few stray thoughts on the sacking of Mickky Pacheco from the cabinet and the filing of an attempted murder charge under Section 304, which is culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Nothing happened to Mickky till Sharad Pawar, the NCP supremo, intervened. Both Chief Minister Digamber Kamat and Home Minister Ravi Naik were reluctant to even mention him by name as an abettor to Nadia Torrado’s suicide. Very cleverly, Mickky turned the heat on the Home Minister and the Chief Minister by calling for a CBI enquiry into the drugs scams involving Ravi Naik and the illegal mining scam in which Digamber Kamat is himself allegedly implicated. Such an enquiry would not have been to the advantage of either Digamber Kamat or Ravi Naik. Indeed, when the decision was taken to transfer the Nadia case to the Crime Branch, it was presumed that it would be the last one would hear of the case. This is because, historically, the Crime Branch has been the favourite burial ground of politicians facing potentially embarrassing cases.
*PAWAR GOOGLY* Mickky would have got away, as he had got away in the past with criminal assault on public officials, but for the intervention of Sharad Pawar, the NCP supremo. It may be recalled that there are several cases pending against Mickky for assaulting public servants in a fit of rage. In one instance, Mickky pulled out the driver of a bus which had overtaken his car and pounded his face with the knuckle dusters he wears on his fingers. On another occasion, Mickky assaulted a junior engineer of the Electricxity Department for a real or imagined grievance. Mickky has had a violent history, which is why the fresh revelation that there were several injury marks on Nadia’s body does not come as a surprise. The injury marks have been confirmed by the Thane police, where she was shifted from the Apollo Victor Hospital in Margao. Even the first post mortem conducted at the Apollo Hospital in Chennai immediately after she died confirmed that there were injury marks made with blunt instruments all over her body. It was at this stage that the police converted the earlier complaint registered as abetment to suicide by unknown persons to culpable homicide amounting to murder. *USEFUL DIVERSION* Mickky’s dropping from the cabinet was on the intervention of the NCP supremo Sharad Pawar. The NCP chief has enough on his plate with a defiant Lalit Modi of the IPL making counter chargers against the NCP leader who is also the chairman of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Amongst the charges made against Sharad Pawar was that one of the firms controlled by him in Pune had made a bid for the Pune franchise. Earlier it was alleged that his son-in-law had a stake in the Mumbai Indians team. Perhaps Sharad Pawar decided that the Mickky case would prove to be a useful diversion from the scams he himself is involved in. It may be recalled that Chief Minister Digamber Kamat has been consistently claiming that he, as leader of the Congress Legislative Party, cannot take any action against Mickky who was a member of the NCP, the coalition party in the Digamber Kamat government. After making suitable enquiries with his most trusted confidant Prafulla Hede, who is the most powerful man in the NCP though he does not hold any office, Pawar gave Digamber Kamat the green signal to drop Mickky from the cabinet. Very promptly indeed, within 24 hours of the sacking of Mickky, the other NCP MLA who has been extremely sore over not getting his due share of the loaves and fishes of office, Nilkant Halarnkar, was sworn in as a cabinet minster. But whether he will be given the tourism portfolio is not sure because apparently both Babush Monserrate and Aleixo Sequeira have staked their claim to the tourism ministry. *NARCO GODFATHER* The sacking of Mickky has created a fresh problem for Digamber Kamat. In the historical game of one-upmanship between the Congress and the NCP, the latter has forged ahead and has demonstrated that it is willing to sack ministers whose conduct is unbecoming. The logical corollary of this is that Digamber Kamat will be under pressure to drop Ravi Naik, the home minister, who is in the centre of the narcotics scam. While the politicians would have us believe that the chief referred to by Israeli drug peddler Atala in the now notorious video posting on the net is the police inspector Ashish Shirodkar, who was suspended, and not allegedly the son of Ravi Naik, Roy Naik, there is no reason why a drug peddler should be frightened of a mere police inspector. Mickky, to save his skin, will no doubt get even more vociferous about Ravi’s links with the drug trade, not to mention the collapse of law and order in Goa. It may be recalled that Mickky Pacheco had gone to the extent of describing Goa as the ‘rape capital of the country.’ In their anxiety to settle scores with each other, the members of the Goa cabinet have never considered how damage would be done to the state if the tourism minister describes Goa as a rape capital. It is ironic that the man who called Goa the rape capital now stands accused of culpable homicide not amounting to murder under Section 304 of the Criminal Procedures Code. Mickky is allegedly absconding. Which means everyone, including the police, know where he is but are reluctant to arrest him. His sidekick and most loyal retainer, Lyndon Monteiro, who had been rewarded with the vice-chairmanship of the Goa Tourism Development Corporation has had his anticipatory bail application rejected by the Court. Since Mickky Pacheco is the principal accused in the Nadia case, he did not get anticipatory bail either. Indeed, a newly emboldened police are now claiming that they will need custodial interrogation of Mickky Pacheco to establish what happened. But it is a case of too little too late as, in the case of Mickky’s bitter rival John Fernandes, who came close to defeating Mickky in the last elections. It will be recalled that the police took over a week to arrest John Fernandes. It was only after he belatedly surrendered that he produced the clothes that he had been wearing on the day of the attempted rape of a Russian woman to the police. It subsequently turned out that it was not the clothes he was wearing on that day. It is more than a fortnight since Nadia died and Mickky has had ample opportunity to destroy all evidence. Even the mobile phone records of Mickky and Nadia have not been called for so far. Nor has any attempt been made to establish whether Mickky was present at the Loutolim house when the suicide attempt, which turned out to be ultimately fatal, was made. *RAT PASTE* Nobody in their senses would buy the story that Nadia ate an entire tube of Ratol by accident, mistaking it for toothpaste. In fact, if anyone ate an entire tube of toothpaste at one go, it would probably have serious consequences. Mickky’s biggest advantage is that he seems to have been able to intimidate or buy the silence and co-operation of the family, including Nadia’s estranged husband. We do not know whether Mickky will spend any time in jail, considering that even Keshub Mahindra, the chairman of Union Carbide, was sentenced to only two years imprisonment for mass murder in the wake of the long drawn out Bhopal tragedy. What would be appropriate is to send Mickky to the Institute of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour and throw away the key. And a few stray observations on my first ever attempt in all of 63 years to trace my roots. Even though I’ve stayed in Goa for 27 years, whenever people are unhappy with what I write they have tended to disparagingly call me a Mallu. Never mind that I have never lived in Kerala nor even visited it, till recently. My father was in the defence accounts and I have stayed in every part of the country which has an ordinance factory. I’ve so completely lost touch with Kerala that I do not even know whether I have any surviving relatives left — whether in Thiruvananthapuram, which is my mother’s home town, or Payannur, which is my father’s village.
