the goan I network
MARGAO
In an interesting development, the Court of Judicial Magistrate First Class, Margao on Wednesday dropped FDA officer Iva Feranndes as a respondent after she consistently refused to file her reply in the application filed by city-based lawyer, Adv Rajiv Gomes in the formalin in fish row.
At the last date of hearing, it was made clear to the FDA officer by the court that it will not wait for her reply since she did not respond to the court to testify as a witness for as many as seven times.
When the matter came up for hearing on Wednesday, FDA officer Iva again did not file her reply, prompting the court to drop her as a witness.
The petitioner, Adv Rajiv Gomes, however, submitted all details and records obtained under the Right to Information Act from the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), which includes the analytical data compiled by Iva Fernandes after conducting the formalin test at the SGDPA wholesale fish market confirming the presence of formalin in the fish.
Adv Gomes later told the media that though his application for registration of FIR against all the persons involved in the formalin in fish row may suffer a setback with the FDA officer not filing her reply to the notice, he, however, said that the data collected by him from the FDA through the RTI will help him with enough material to convince the court to issue direction to the Fatorda police to register FIR against the concerned persons.
