PANAJI
The case of ‘coercive religious conversions’ against Siolim-based pastor Domnic D’Souza took a curious turn on Wednesday with the wife of one of the two complainants claiming that her husband’s allegations were false, on a day the State government transferred the probe to the Goa Police’s Crime Branch.
The case, which attracted widespread attention from media and various quarters in the State, had been booked by Mapusa police last Thursday on the basis of two complaints.
D’Souza, his partner Joan Mascarenhas besides other “unknown associates” who operate from a church styled ‘Five Pillars Church’ at Sodiem in Siolim were booked. However only the pastor was arrested in the case but he secured conditional bail from a Mapusa court.
Offences registered in the FIR against D’Souza and his associates are under the IPC sections 153-A which deals with promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion and 295-A dealing with deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage reliÂgious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or beliefs.
Another section 506 of IPC, dealing with criminal intimidation was also applied besides sections 3, 4 of the Drugs and Magic Remedies (Objectionable Advertisements) Act, 1954 related to their activities of healing services.
Meanwhile, hours before the case was transferred to the Crime Branch on Wednesday, Sushma publicly claimed that the allegations levelled against D’Souza by her husband Prakash Khobrekar of Mapusa are false.
Addressing the media accompanied by her sister, Sushma claimed that she had been attending sessions at the Siolim premises of the pastor since 2011 in search of peace of mind and that she has not been ‘converted’. She also narrated allegations of misbehaviour and harassment against her husband because of which she claimed to have shifted residence to her family home.
