One police sub-inspector was suspended on Monday for dereliction of duty, while four persons, all local Goans, were arrested for brutally assaulting a 47-year-old tourist from Delhi outside a resort in the beach village of Anjuna in North Goa with knives and a baseball bat following a brawl earlier this month.
The assault on the tourist, also forced an intervention from Chief Minister Pramod Sawant on Monday. He urged both locals and tourists to not take law into their hands and added that harassment of tourists will not be tolerated.
“They (accused) should have been arrested on the same day. I have ordered the suspension of a police officer who failed to arrest them. He will be suspended by today evening and a detailed inquiry will be done against him,” Sawant told at a press conference on Monday.
The brutal assault came to light late on Sunday after the family of the tourist Ashwin Kumar Chandrani, uploaded a video citing their ordeal during their holiday in Goa in the first week of March. The victim’s family also alleged that officials at the Anjuna police station had watered down their complaint.
The four persons who have been arrested in connection with the assault are Joseph Lobo, Royston Dias, Nyron Dias, and Kashinath Agardekar, all residents of Anjuna. The assault followed a quarrel between one of the accused, who works as a waiter at the resort, and the victim on March 5, outside the resort premises in Anjuna.
Sawant said that a case has now been registered. “Had the hotel manager informed the police at the initial stage then such an incident would have not happened. Even tourists make some mistakes, which should be handled well. The manager should have handled it. In this case, even a tourist tried to assault a waiter and later he (the waiter) came with a knife… we will not tolerate such incidents,” the Chief Minister said.
The brutal assault comes on the heels of several skirmishes between local residents of the state and tourists in the state, where nearly eight million tourists -- four times the state’s population -- visit every year.
Sawant incidentally also referred to another recent incident between tourists and the security guards at Goa’s popular heritage site, the Old Goa church complex, in which a female tourist allegedly assaulted the guards.