In January this year, the Margao police arrested two men who later confessed to committing over 50 cases of burglary, stealing goods worth well over Rs 1.5 crore. After their confession, the police nabbed their accomplice in Margao and conducted investigations into many goldsmiths who had bought stolen property. The two burglars were Mario Baptista and Ryan Dias, from Benaulim and Raia, while the Margao middleman was Domingo Diniz. All these men were thoroughbred Goans, just like Nilesh Raikar of the infamous Kamaxi Forex scam, who allegedly duped almost 200 people out of their life’s savings. Every month, a large amount of crimes solved by the Goan police force investigators leads to the arrest of many Goans.
All this casts a shadow on the recent statement by Deputy Chief Minister Francis D’Souza, where he effectively blamed Goa’s migrant population for most crimes in Goa. The minister from Mapusa, speaking at an event held by the Travel and Tourism Association of Goa, said ‘Migrants make it difficult to maintain peace in Goa. Most of the crimes are committed by migrants.” It doesn’t bode well for the State’s image when an elected representative makes a sweeping statement like this.
This is not to say that the poorer section of migrants, who come into Goa as manual labour, can be absolved of any connection to serious crime in the state. In 2014, official sources in South Goa attributed the rise in rape and molestation cases in the region to the increasing number of migrant labour. Rape and molestation cases were being recorded in Salcete and the surrounding talukas but had risen due to the burgeoning of housing projects that employed manual migrant labour. This does not remove Goans from the equation. There have been serious crimes across Goa, not just in Salcete that were committed by Goans. One has to only go back a few months to March 2016, when tiatrist Anthony Fernandes stabbed and killed his wife, hacked her body to pieces and then burned them in an isolated spot near their Moti Dongor apartment.
There are drug runners in Anjuna and northern parts of Goa, Goan gangs that have run the drug trade for decades, hand in glove with foreign nationals. The murder of a Nigerian in 2013, after clashing with these local gangs is proof enough that they exist, under the noses of Goan police. All across Goa, there have been alleged cases of graft involving panches and sarpanches, municipal officials and even ministers. Where there is smoke there is certainly fire. Most of these men, and women, are Goan.
When minister make statements that bring an entire community into focus, based on the crimes of a few, it puts a dent into the image of the state and the people that reside within. Over the past few years, several ministers have bitten off much more than they could chew, making statements that insulted the differently abled when calling them ‘God’s mistake’ for example. This is not what administrators of a state should be doing.
Francis D’Souza has effectively called the migrant community criminals, stating that they disturb the peace of the region. This statement was made without any statistics or examples and is a clear case of trying to win over the Goan populace by deflecting the blame for what can be perceived as an abysmal record of crime prevention over the past four years. This is also akin to throwing your hands in the air and saying ‘It’s not my fault, it’s theirs.”. Does Goa deserve this?
