The Goa police are under fire for their handling of the attack on the Panjim town police station last week. Though it was apparent that MLA Babush Monserrate was rounding up hundreds of his supporters to confront the police over the detention of one of his men involved in a gang clash earlier, the police top brass did little to requisition additional reinforcements from the Indian Reserve Battalion stationed just 10 minutes away from Panjim.

A group of 40-odd police personnel at the town police bore the brunt of a well-calculated attack on the station before the IRBs were sent in. Local reporters saw the MLA’s men — armed with stones, sticks and soda bottles — go to the inadequately manned station. Monserrate was leading the crowd from the front and disappeared when the stoning began.

The mob — police chief B S Brar says there were over 1,200 of them — was dispersed only after the deputy collector arrived and ordered tear gas shelling; a good two hours after the confrontation began. “In all my 31 years in the police force I have never seen a station attacked so brutally in this Naxalite-like manner,” Brar said.
Some 32 police personnel, a good many of them women, were injured in this clash between the law enforcers and the MLA’s goons. Caught in the sheer chaos of the violent clash, Panjim Mayor Tony Rodrigues, the MLA’s political stooge was also badly injured and hospitalised. Monserrate and his wife Jennifer were arrested the same night and slapped with attempt to murder charges.

The storming of the police station and the police’s vendetta on the MLA are a first for Goa. Stunned by the brazen disregard for the uniform displayed by the former minister and his henchmen, the cops struck back as ruthlessly. They barged into both his upscale bungalows, dragged his unsuspecting 17-year-old son and friend to the station, beat them up and set about smashing whatever was breakable in the residences.

Outside Monserrate’s mansion in Taleigao, his constituency in suburban Panjim, a silver Mercedes, a Honda CRV and a Scorpio — symbols of wealth and power — have been battered with police batons, their windscreens smashed through with flower pots from the pavement.

The rage of the police retaliation from a force largely docile and laid-back comes as a huge surprise. It is a warning the Goa government needs to take seriously. Cops in Goa have been pushed around, transferred, promoted, demoted and ordered about at political whim, their authority completely undermined by the well-connected, and worse, by those who have risen from a criminal background to positions of power. It is a force seething with frustration and rancour.

Monserrate is not a new breed of politician in Goa. Corruption has been an all-pervasive norm of political life here. Starting out on the wrong side of the law with his shady business antecedents as a money-lender, he has definitely lowered the bar for “acceptable” levels of corruption, political brinkmanship and political goondaism. His entry into politics has introduced pecuniary largesse during the polls of levels never seen before. Motorcycles were distributed to cops willing to look the other way during elections. Petty thugs, who command clutches of votes in migrant settlements and village clusters, were well looked after. Eyewitnesses said that ruffians had been recruited from slums for a fee to bolster the mob outside the Panjim police station.

Once seen as politically “untouchable” by the BJP, Monserrate has today earned a veneer of political respectability and social acceptability. His reputation for ruthlessness sends shivers down the spines of most politicians in Goa. After he was released on bail by the courts, a stream of politicians and ministers called on the MLA to empathise with him over the “police brutality” against him and his family.

A bunch of Congress ministers now wants Chief Minister Digambar Kamat to transfer Superintendent of Police Neeraj Thakur and is baying for the suspension of other police officials. Facing a battery of media cameras, Monserrate displayed his bruises and swore vengeance against the cops. He also sent out a veiled threat to the chief minister and Home Minister Ravi Naik, warning them that they too have children who are vulnerable.

A few months ago Monserrat’s supporters had brutally attacked a Youth Congress rally in his constituency and damaged property to force the closure of the new IT Park in Dona Paula. No action was taken against them. Though there is video footage to nail the MLA and his supporters for their attack on the police station and its personnel, the deliberate focus on the police retaliation will allow him once again to win the day.