PANAJI
Prominent former police officer, Santoba Desai, passed away on Sunday. He was 83.
Desai, a former Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) until the late 1990s, played a controversial role in Goa’s defection-ridden politics of the 1990s, including the 1994 result-day split of the Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Party (MGP) when four of its twelve MLAs-elect—Deu Mandrekar, Chandrakant Chodankar, Dr Wilfred Mesquita, and Jagdish Acharya—broke off to prop up the Pratapsingh Rane-led Congress government.
Desai was known to be a Rane confidant but had a fallout over police service and promotion matters, leading to his quitting the force. He then went on to unsuccessfully contest against Rane, ironically on the MGP ticket, in the 1999 elections. Later, in 2002, Desai contested against Rane again from Poriem, this time on a BJP ticket, but was unsuccessful once more.
After his resignation from police service, Desai went into business, setting up and operating a plant at Surla, Bicholim, as a franchise of Indian cement major, ACC.
