The almost weekly murders by migrants has carried on. As seen from this series, migrants of the Muslim community dominate organized gang crime. While, other migrants, appear to have reached new heights in their perfidious activities. But politicians nurturing votebanks and corrupt officers play a part. How else do you explain a deed of transfer of rights and interests without any compensation was executed by a person who was alive with one who died decades ago.

April 23, 2019

Lionel Messias

Dial “M” for Murder


January 28, 2018: Krishna Belgaonkar of Belgaum stabs Manish Singh of Haryana to death at Calangute.
April 1, 2018: Kalpana Bariki murders husband Basavraj Bariki of Karnataka in their Curchorem flat, hacks the body into three parts and disposes them off at three different locations at Anmod Ghat. It took over a month for the ghastly murder to be discovered.
May 12, 2018: Dinesh Gawda, 20, of Orissa kills his maternal uncle at Kale close to Benaulim, in a drunken rage.
September 1, 2018: Anjuna police arrest Suleman Siddiqui for his involvement in a July 2014 Anjuna murder case and a September 2016 attack on a Mapusa lawyer. He and his accomplices entered the lawyer’s office near the Mapusa court complex and tried to inject him with a white liquid. In the 2014 murder case, Siddiqui was accused of murdering Luiza Fernandes, 70, of Bamon vaddo, Siolim, after she backed out of a deal to sell him two Anjuna properties. He was arrested in Hyderabad.   

Goa feels the heat of migrant crime, perfidy

November 9, 2018: By November, Margao police, unable to stop the criminal activities of Anwar Shaik alias ‘Tiger’, asked the court of the district collector to begin externment proceedings against him. The Margao town and Fatorda police had a total of 18 First Information Reports (FIR) filed against him. A known Karnataka criminal, he turned to Goa, to continue his criminal activities after serving a jail term there. In 2018 he assaulted a Margao businessman Robin D’Souza. He also assaulted a Gogol Housing Board resident A Yousuf. Police also asked the home department to take action against him under the National Security Act (NSA) for his acts of assault, extortion, theft and criminal intimidation.  

As seen from this series (see End of the Ethnic Goan-3) migrants of the Muslim community dominate organized gang crime and criminal intimidation. While, other migrant communities, on the whole appear to have reached new heights in their perfidious activities. It’s almost as if they have a certain quality to do so.  As this was being written, the Old Goa police arrested four persons including Arshad Khan (March 24, 2019), a police constable attached to the Panjim police. The others arrested were Mustafa, Afzal and Karpuswamy, who police said, assaulted Mohammad Haldwale at Indiranagar, Chimbel, a notorious migrant slum colony also referred to in this series. Within days as if to buttress the argument, a migrant from Orissa, Ashok Panchanam Kumar confessed to killing his wife K Bindu from Kerala, after she refused to have sex with him. They live in Zuarinagar.

The almost weekly murders committed by migrants didn’t stop there. It simply carried on, unstoppable.   

In different but related context, the Agasaim police arrested India Reserve Battalion (IRB) constable Maheshrao Ananthu, his father Sommaiah Ananthu, mother Ramanamma Ananthu and brother Manoj Ananthu and booked them under the Dowry Prohibition Act. Police said the constable’s wife Anushu, who lived with her husband’s family, committed suicide on February 9, 2019 after persistent demands were made on her to pay them a dowry. The point we make here is migrants with a criminal bent of mind have even succeeded in getting recruited into the Goa police!

A Kabrastan next!

If migrant colonies proliferate, as is the case currently, it could only mean one thing; that they have a powerful facilitator in the government, waistdeep in dirty vote bank politics and with a political skin as thick as the toughest hide. Thus, Vijai Sardesai assumed Digambar Kamat’s mantle some time ago (remember, Digambar Kamat created Moti Dongor) and could even be said to be a torchbearer of sorts. Early in March, 2019 he assured the Muslim community in Margao that his government had sanctioned Rs. 15,16,58,00 to acquire 20,000 sq mt of land for a kabrastan or burial ground. The location which he intentionally kept a secret in anticipation of objections from the Catholic community, whose identity he however divulged; he said had already been earmarked for multi utility use in the land use map. Strangely, Sardesai revealed such land was earmarked only in Sirvodem which has two mosques and one in neighbouring Sarvodem. With this, he said, he was confident Muslims supporters especially in Fatorda would not leave his Goa Forward Party. While a few common cremation and burial grounds have been created, this will be Goa’s first exclusive burial place and that too built at a huge cost.

Like Trump, Goa too needs a wall

Even, if it were only a bit of loosely structured legislation as far as ethnic Goans are concerned, and as a result doomed to failure. After all, government ministers regularly threaten industrialists over hiring Goan workers, but do nothing about it legally. Just like Vijai Sardesai’s catch phrase 'Goenkarponn' which in reality amounts to nothing at all. In fact, Sardesai stretched his Goenkarponn to the limits last month when speaking at a volleyball tournament organized by the Goa Nepali Society, he said, “I do hope that you all will become Goenkars in course of time and respect the laws of the land, respect the culture and traditions of Goa.” Yes, that was Sardesai at his performing best and yes, you didn’t even know the 50,000 Nepalis living in Goa had organized themselves as a force to reckon with.

Dead man walking

But here’s reality for you. In May 2018, a Vasco resident, Longinhos Fernandes, revealed that a migrant Rekha Belgaonkar used forged documents, false affidavits, faked signatures and thumb impressions of a dead person to transfer the house tax records of a temporary house in his property in Desterro (near El Monte theatre) to her name. This he said was done with the connivance of the Mormugao Municipal Council (MMC). The dead person was Dugvenkar Reddy who had earlier lived in an illegal structure on the property (presumably the same house). Reddy died on July 7, 1974. Belgaonkar succeeded in getting his house tax registration transferred to her name!

The wheels within wheels that turned in her favour can perhaps be explained by this single fact; that under the very eyes of a corrupt MMC, a deed of transfer of rights and interests without any compensation was executed by a person who was alive with one who died decades ago. The shenanigan was helped on by a Notary Public SD Pawooskar who notarized the deed of rights on January 7, 2012 by looking the other way when it was a simple matter of a dead man not being present to identify himself as per law. The extent of this perfidy could perhaps have occurred only in the MMC.

In fact, according to Fernandes, the licence of the Notary expired on February 9, 2009, three years and five months before he notarized the deed imagining a dead man was in his office. “Dead Man Walking”, mysteries will never cease when it comes to migrants!