PANAJI
The search for Gautam Khattar, accused of making allegedly offensive remarks about St Francis Xavier, took an unexpected turn on Friday after a national news agency's tweet appeared to suggest a lack of coordination between the Goa and Uttarakhand police, only for both sides to later dismiss the account as a misreport.
The confusion arose after the agency quoted the Dehradun City Superintendent of Police that the Goa Police had not formally communicated with them regarding the case. The statement quickly went viral, raising questions over whether the investigation had hit a bureaucratic impasse.
Speaking to The Goan, senior officers from both States rejected that narrative, saying the report had incorrectly attributed the statement and misrepresented the status of the search.
Dehradun City SP P S Dobal said he had issued no such statement and clarified that the case did not even fall within his jurisdiction. The matter, he said, was being handled by the Dehradun Dehat Police.
“There was no such statement from me,” the officer told The Goan, adding that the Khattar case was outside the City Police’s remit.
The clarification appeared to restore a sense of coherence to an investigation that rapidly escalated in recent days before the arrest of Khattar in Himachal Pradesh. Director General of Goa Police, Alok Kumar, too stated the pursuit of Khattar was coordinated “at the highest level” with authorities in Uttarakhand.
“We are in touch at the top level and police teams of both the States are in continuous coordination... We have been getting all the support from them,” Kumar had said before the arrest.
Officials in Dehradun also told The Goan that they had asked the news agency to issue a clarification to dispel the "false impression of miscommunication between the two police forces".
