Ponda road: Activists arrested, released
Govind Gaude agitating against road he says is to help land mafias
THE GOAN NETWORK
PONDA
Govind Gaude and his fellow villager Sarvanand Kurpaskar were on Thursday arrested for allegedly obstructing the road work at Farmagudi-Ponda.
Police informed that both were booked under Sections 341 (wrongful restraint), 353 (to deter public servant from discharging duty), 186 (obstructing public servant in discharge of public functions) and 506 r/w 34 (criminal intimidation) of IPC. They were later released on bail.
Gaude on February 22, asked the contractor to stop construction work of a road at Goa Engineering campus, Farmagudi. He had alleged that the road was being constructed to facilitate land mafias, who are developing plots on comunidade land at Katamgalli-Farmagudi.
PWD had launched the work of two roads from the GEC campus border. One road was proposed to Katamgalli, where religious structure exists and also at developed plots, while the other road of 1.5 km stretch from the right hand side of GEC is under construction, which will connect Veling.
Since last many years, Gaude under the banner of Jan Jagruti Manch Bandora is opposing the development of plots at Katamgalli, claiming that the land belongs to the comunidade.
According to sources, police were following Gaude when he had gone to meet GEC Principal Dr Vinayak Shet on Thursday morning. While he was returning, his car was stopped by the police at GEC gate. Though Gaude told the police that he would go to the police station, police kept following him while he went to the Ganpati temple.
Furious over the approach of the police, who were moving behind him in a public place, Gaude had arguments with the police demanding that summons be sent. Police were mum when he raised the legal aspects of issuing summons.
PI Sudesh Naik, who was in the area, told Gaude to go to the police station, where he was arrested.
Meanwhile, when Gaude met Dr Shet, he requested him to stop the work of the road.
However, Dr Shet said permission for road was given only for security purpose of students. “On the pretext of going to Veling and Katamgalli (religious place), many people enter our campus, as there is access to both places from the campus. Hence, to get rid of this menace, we had permitted PWD to construct the road from the border of our campus,” said Shet.
