Missing witness,falling stock
A witness regularly called upon by the police to substantiate - in most cases falsely - testimony pertaining to police cases is known as a ‘stock witness’. Generally, when a court believes that a certain person is a ‘stock witness’, it treats the testimony with grave suspicion and intensely scrutinises it. Many of these so-called witnesses operate on the margins of the law. If they do not co-operate with the police, they tend to suddenly face a large number of criminal cases themselves.
The most notorious stock witness in India’s history was one Prem Chand ‘Paniwallah’, a water seller who, around 20 years ago, approached the Supreme Court to quash an order of externment from Delhi. He told the court that police had used him as a stock witness in nearly 3,000 cases and, when he declined to continue, bogus cases were slapped on him. Interestingly, though the police earned the court’s ire for abusing the judicial process with stock witnesses, it did not order the reopening of the cases that Paniwala had testified in, because the courts were too busy…!
Be that as it may, the point is that Prakash Baburao Metri, a resident of Indranagar at Chimbel who stood surety for Israeli drug dealer Yaniv Benaim alias Atala, was a stock witness of the police. Atala is currently missing, and is suspected of having jumped bail. The Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Court in Mapusa has issued a warrant against him, and forfeited the Rs50,000 bail bond amount he deposited. Conveniently, Metri too is not to be found!
While the former is not unusual, especially when foreigners are accused in cases in Goa, the latter certainly raises eyebrows. The person who stood surety for Atala has a history of being witness in at least half a dozen police cases over a decade.
What was already dubbed the police-drug mafia nexus has seen a new turn with a police stock witness as surety. It only reinforces suspicions that certain policemen wanted Atala to get away. Did some rogue policemen help to arrange a surety for Atala from among the ranks of their ‘regular’ witnesses?
The disappearance of Atala for over a month before the police reported him missing has already raised a question mark on their functioning. That the fact of Atala’s disappearance was deliberately withheld from the Goa Legislative Assembly has only strengthened suspicions. And now, that some policemen may have been instrumental in arranging a surety for Atala so that he could be released on bail points the needle of suspicion squarely at a police-drug mafia nexus. The only remaining question is whether these same policemen have any hand in facilitating Metri’s disappearance too.
Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, who has so far been solidly backing Home Minister Ravi Naik in refusing to even consider a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigation into the nexus, should now seriously reconsider his position. With every new revelation, the ground he is standing on looks increasingly more shaky.
Selective speed?
If any more evidence is required that the Goa Police can move fast when it applies its mind, the high-profile kidnapping drama in Goa’s commercial capital on Wednesday provided it. After the minor daughter of a petrol pump owner was kidnapped for ransom of Rs20 lakh by a minor boy, police moved in, nabbed the lad and rescued the girl, even as the parents unsuccessfully tried to pay the ransom.
Earlier, the kidnapping of the son a resort owner from Vagator resulted in a dramatic rescue in the forests of Agonda. But why is it that the police choose to apply themselves only in certain cases and not in others? For example, why has there been no progress in the gruesome murder of Naresh Dourado in Vasco last month?
