CANACONA
Canacona police has registered an offence against Congress leader Janardhan Bhandari, Goa Forward Party Environment Cell Chairman Vikas Bhagat and two others on charges of locking the PWD Assistant Engineer’s incident of Wednesday at Canacona.Canacona police are now on the lookout for the four accused.
Canacona PI Chandrakant Gawas said the police acted on a complaint from Asst Engineer PWD (Roads) Deelip Kerkar and registered an offence against Bhandari, Bhagat and two other persons on charges of criminal trespass, wrongfully confining the complainant in his cabin by putting lock and obstructing him while discharging his lawful duty. The FIR is registered under Sections 342, 353, 451, 186 r/w 34 IPC.
Reacting to the development, Bhagat said, “We are ready to face the law of the land. The complainant is politically pressurised to file a complaint. We will not be cowed down and will take whatever measures required as per the law.”
Earlier speaking at a news conference, Bhandari alleged that Speaker and Canacona MLA Ramesh Tawadkar had been exerting pressure on the police to arrest them, after they had locked up the PWD (Roads) AE and JE.
Expressing sadness on the death of a couple in a road mishap on Tuesday, Bhagat said the Shristhal panch had sat on a hunger strike after the officers had not paid heed to his complains that the PWD had failed to start road repair works on four roads in his ward.
“We questioned the officer concerned but he refused to give us a satisfactory reply and we then applied a lock to his cabin. Later, the police came and requested to open the lock and have a discussion in the matter,” said Bhandari.
“Later in a press note, Tawadkar stated that the agitation was not as per democratic way and added that the activists involved should be put behind bars. We have realised that out-of-the-box agitations have met with instant results.”
“We once took a PWD Asst Engineer in an ambulance to enable the officer to get first-hand experience of the hardships of patients in an ambulance while travel on a bad road and within 5-8 days, the NH66 road section at Nagorcem got hotmixed.”
“On another occasion, we covered the leaking roof of KTC bus stand with thatched coconut leaves and within next five days day, the roof was repaired with new sheets,” Bhandari added.
Bhagat accused Tawadkar of taking part in the UTTA agitation at Balli, where trees were felled and put on the road.
“Stones were brought on the road and thousands of people were held hostage for 5-6 hours during the Balli agitation. Did Tawadkar agitate in accordance with democracy? On the contrary, we did not destroy public property during our agitations.”
