Convinced that Bismarque Dias was murdered two concerned citizen journalists set out to prove it. They spent a day at St Estevam, spoke to residents, the two boys who last saw Bismarque alive, the police and everyone who had interacted with the former priest on November 5. They managed to piece together the last 12 hours in the former priest's life, from the time he left home at around 1.30 in the afternoon till the time of his disappearance. This is their story.
PANJIM: On Thursday November 5, at around 1:30 pm Bismarque walked out of his house in what would be the last time he was doing so. Bismarque went towards the shop of one Sydney who owns a wholesale liquor shop in the lane parallel to Bismarque’s home and bought a bottle of beer which he proceeded to drink in Sydney’s balcony.
On this afternoon Bismarque was chatting with two young boys one of whom he knew, while the other was from another vaddo of the village and hence he was not familiar with him.
Both the boys were dropouts with one dropping out of school and the other out of college and were surviving by doing odd jobs like that of waiters with caterers, etc.
Bismarque began to tell the boys about how they need to work hard in life and not loiter around the village and gave his own example of how he himself at one point of time used to live on the streets of Mumbai and earn money by cutting people’s hair, a skill which he had learnt. The conversation continued right up to 4:30 pm by which time Bismarque had finished his beer. He was drinking the same bottle of beer from 1:30 till 4:30 pm.
At 4:30 he asked for another bottle of beer which he said he would take home and drink but instead as the conversation wore on, proceeded to open the bottle of warm beer and begin to drink it.
At 6 pm, one of the boy’s mother arrived home (they stayed close to Sydney’s house) and she found the three of them still outside Sydney’s wine shop chatting. She worked as a maid in people’s houses doing daily chores and had to head back out soon as she got a call to take care of an elderly lady, who needed help. At this point Bismarque told the mother of the boy that they were going to ‘Vaichi Vatt’ a place in the village that is frequented by those who took evening walks or people who just come to sit and soak in the evening breeze or young boys who come to drink.
Bismarque went back home, to his room (which is on the first floor) brought out ₹500 and told them to go to Marcel and buy a box of beer pints, since he didn’t want the young boys to be seen buying beer in the village. While the boys went to Marcel, Bismarque went walking to ‘Vaichi Vatt’, which is only ten minutes away from where he lived.
When the boys reached ‘Vaichi Vatt’ they found Bismarque talking to an elderly man and they overheard his conversation which was about comunidade issues and land. While they were talking, Bismarque asked the boys to go ahead and start with their drinks. Since they didn’t have an opener, they opened the bottles with their teeth and Bismarque admonished them for doing so warning that they could break their teeth. He then tried to open the bottles by putting the caps against each other, which didn’t work so the third bottle too (which Bismarque was to drink) was opened with the of teeth.
As the conversation wore on, the two boys drank about 10 beer pints among them and Bismarque drank two. Since 1:30 in the afternoon till 8:30 at night, Bismarque had the two beer bottles from Sydney’s and the two pints with the boys.
Their conversation moved from nature, seeing God in nature, love for the environment, trees forests, etc.
With the beer over, they wanted to have another beer case. However, since they had no money, Bismarque asked them to go to Down the Hill bar, where he said: “If you tell him my name, he’ll give it on credit.” Since the boys didn’t want to go without him, the three went triple seated on the bike and bought yet another case of beer.
At this point, another two boys -- the brother of one of the boys with Bismarque and another boy, who used to work along with the boys, were dispatched by one of the boy’s parents to find out about their whereabouts and ask them to come home. Bismarque told the two that he would drop the boys home and to tell the mother not to worry.
By this time, the conversation shifted from God to ghosts with Bismarque urging the boys not to believe in ghosts. To prove a point, the boys decided that they walk towards the tide gate (manos), a place which is believed to be haunted at night.
On their way they met some people, locals who live along the path towards the tide gate and spoke to them for ten minutes. Bismarque carried the case while one of the boys held the torch to show the way. At the manos they continued their conversations sitting in a thatched hut built at the manos chatting about ghosts and the three of them had one pint each. At the end of his bottle, Bismarque decided he wanted to go for a swim took off his outer clothing and ventured into the water.
After a while, the two boys said they were feeling hot sitting in the hut, which also had a tarpaulin sheet covering it and the trio decided to move to a location 50 metres away. When they lifted the beer box, the bottom gave way (since it was soaked with water that condensed off the chilled beers) and three bottles fell to the ground and broke.
They then proceeded to the new spot where each of them opened one beer each and Bismarque ventured into the water again. Bismarque asked the boys not to come in the water since they do not know the ‘science of tides’. The boys had kept a torch focussed on Bismarque while he swam and Bismarque began to challenge the so-called ghosts.
A police panchanama at the site has found three unopened beer bottles, six empty beer bottles and three broken beer bottles, which corroborates this information, which has been pieced together.
“Denvchara! bhoota! Tu io and hanv tuka chidd’ddun mhojea bollsant ghaltolo!” Bismarque was calling out in the night in a bid to convince the boys that there is no such thing as ghosts. After a while he asked them to put off the torch, even as he continued to converse with them in the dark and made ‘scary’ sounds like ‘oooooo!’ ‘aaaaaaaah!’ etc.
After a while, at around 2 am Bismarque decided to move from the manos to the main river. He was not heard from since then. The mouth of the river is known to be a place where whirlpools form during the incoming tide.
Since there was no noise, the two boys put the torch back on and began calling out to him. They called out to him for quite a while, when one of the boys, who was tired and hungry and could barely keep himself awake decided that Bismarque was a good swimmer and that he would return. While he returned to the hut, the other boy continued to call out to Bismarque for another half an hour before he too decided that he would go to sleep.
They fell asleep immediately only to wake up at 5 am with the mosque prayers. In the morning they again called out to Bismarque and one of the boys swam to a floating canoe in the river to see if he had climbed onto the canoe and slept. But when he reached the canoe he wasn’t there. Scared, the boys returned back to the village through another path, which wasn’t very populated as they were afraid they would be questioned about his whereabouts, which they didn’t know.
The body of Bismarque was found floating in the rivulet on Saturday morning (November 7), plunging the village of St Estevam and surrounding areas into grief.
But the shock and grief soon turned into disbelief after the post mortem revealed that Bismarque had died of asphyxia due to drowning.
Heeding to the demands of activists and family members, Additional Collector Swapnil Naik ordered an inquiry to be conducted by SDM Gourish Sankhwalkar even as a second autopsy was conducted on Sunday with a number of villagers and activists gathering outside the GMC morgue during the course of the autopsy.
The family members of activist Bismarque Dias, have refused to go ahead with his funeral ‘until they are satisfied that the Goa police and the Goa government are serious about conducting a comprehensive fruitful investigation into the incident.
