Days after partial demolition of a residence in North Goa’s Assagao prompted Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant’s intervention, a purported report submitted to the state government has claimed that Goa Director General of Police Jaspal Singh “pressurised” his subordinates from Anjuna police station to allow the house to be razed, it is learnt.
The report, purportedly written by a policeman from the police station and submitted to Chief Secretary Puneet Kumar Goel, claims that the DGP was “continuously pressuring” the police officer to allow the demolition and warned of “consequences” if work didn’t begin in 10 minutes.
This comes days after police registered an FIR in the case based on a complaint by Prinsha Agarwadekar who, along with her husband, claims to be “owners-in-possession” of the house since 2001. She claimed that her landlord had “fraudulently” entered into a sale with one of the suspects, a Mumbai-based woman.
In her complaint, Agarwadekar claimed she and her husband were inside the house in Bairo Alto Assagao on June 22 when 15 people barged in, telling her they had orders to knock it down.
Five people have so far been arrested. The Mumbai-based woman has been booked.
The purported report quotes the DGP as saying that the Mumbai-based woman was the owner of the property and that there was “no need to take action into the complaint”.
Both DGP Singh and chief secretary Goel declined to comment. SDPO Mapusa, under whose jurisdiction the police station comes, too declined to comment on the issue.
Superintendent of Police, Crime, Rahul Gupta said, “There is one unnamed and unsigned document which was received today… levelling allegations against senior officers. It is premature to draw conclusions from such unverifiable document. Investigation is already ongoing in the case.”
The incident had snowballed into a political slugfest, with the Opposition demanding a high-level inquiry committee under a retired High Court judge to probe the case and alleging that the act was perpetrated by “land and real-estate mafia”. The Opposition has also called for a probe into the involvement of police officers in the matter.
On Thursday, three police officials of Anjuna police station – inspector Prashal Dessai, sub-inspector Sanket Pokhare and sub-inspector Nitin Naik – were suspended after a preliminary enquiry.
The purported report states that one of the police officers received a call from the DGP asking him “why the work of demolition” had been stopped. It also claims that the DGP said that any person obstructing the demolition should be “lifted from the spot and brought to the police station”.
