Nipping in Bud

EDITORIAL
Posted on 2008-10-15
THE brutal incident that took place on late Monday evening at a restaurant in an alley behind the General Post Office, Panaji was of a kind that is not seen or heard of in Goa. The assault on activist lawyer, Mr Aires Rodrigues and heritage conservationist, Mr Prajal Sakhardande that left them seriously wounded was a horrendous sign of a society now ready to adopt violent means to settle a dispute. We do not know yet in definite terms whether the assault was related to the espousing by Mr Rodrigues of the cause of the German researcher, Ms Fadela Fuchs who had filed a complaint with the Calangute police station alleging that the son of a minister had sexually assaulted her minor daughter. Let us hope police investigators on the job would arrive at and reveal the truth about the identities of the persons who came wearing masks to attack Mr Rodrigues.
From the facts of the brutal incident, certain things are clear: One, the attack was planned. The attackers knew where Mr Rodrigues was; which sort of definite knowledge could only be possible when you have men following someone’s movements whole day or day after day. That would suggest that there were other people in the conspiracy watching his movements and not just those who came to attack him. Another vital aspect that strengthens the theory of a planned conspiracy is the wearing of masks by the attackers. Police are yet to tell us what type of masks the assailants had hidden their faces in, but the very fact of they all having one covering their face shows that the attack did not happen because some guys just noticed Mr Rodrigues sitting there and charged at him, aroused by some old and ancient memory of hostility.
The yet another aspect that proves it was not spontaneous but planned was the carrying of various types of conventional arms by attackers. So far, no evidence has come of any of the assailants pulling out a gun, but who knows if any of them were carrying firearms too hidden in their cloaks; only that they did not pull them out, as they might not have needed to do so if the conventional weapons were doing the job alright fine?
All said and done, the totality of factual evidence does not yet prove they were the concerned minister’s rogues. Yet what this totality does point to is that those five or six masked attackers who came there to batter and cut the flesh of Mr Aires Rodrigues were no ordinary playful neighbourhood urchins who would know a hundred tricks to pluck away a guava from somebody’s compound or frighten somebody with weird or macho actions. The very suddenness of the attack, the pulling down of the shutters before they charged at Mr Rodrigues (closing entry to anybody else and shutting out the shrieks), the overwhelming number of human arms carrying a variety of arms (so the person cannot escape injuries, no matter how well he resisted), the brutalities they unleashed on all those who tried to defend Mr Rodrigues – all these add up to a picture of a gang that is trained to hunt targets and hit them and a gang that was not doing it for the first time.
The question before the Goa police is very clear: Do we allow such gangsterism to grow or do we nip it in the bud? Pretty sure, it still is in the bud in this state. If it blossoms, you have it. There will be no respite for anybody. Today it has happened to a lawyer and a heritage conservationist; tomorrow it can happen to you and me. The rule of law must prevail. All are equal in the eyes of law, whether ministers, professionals or ordinary folks. And for this equality to remain sacrosanct, the police have to play its role fair and straight. And so have the chief minister and the home minister of the state.