Cops shielding ex-Goa minister in assault case: Activist

Social activist and lawyer Aires Rodrigues, whose petition led the local court to issue an arrest warrant against former minister Francisco Mickky Pacheco in a 2006 assault case, has now accused the police of "allowing the politician to abscond".
Pacheco, a controversial figure in Goa politics, had slapped an on-duty junior engineer nine years ago, for which he was sentenced to six months in jail by the Goa Bench of Bombay High Court in 2014.
Judicial Magistrate First Class in Margao town had on last Friday ordered Pacheco's arrest in seven days, after his conviction for assaulting a government servant was upheld by the high court and the Supreme Court had refused to give him any relief.

Pacheco has been missing since then, while police have sent their teams to track him to places like Delhi and Tamil Nadu.
Rodrigues today filed a petition before JMFC Margao seeking an inquiry and action against the Colva police for not arresting the convicted former minister.
"The Colva Police, instead of diligently executing the warrant, have in connivance and collusion been shielding Pacheco in total disrespect and contempt of the court," Rodrigues alleged in his petition.

He has pleaded before the court that the moves by the police to arrest him are "superficial".
"The so-called look-out notice was a cosmetic exercise only to shield themselves if their inaction is questioned by the court," the petition mentions.

Rodrigues has also claimed that as a mere eye-wash, a team of Colva Police reportedly left for Delhi on a train, while to nab (journalist) Tarun Tejpal (accused of sexually assaulting a woman), the police had swiftly air dashed back and forth.
He claimed that a perusal of the records of the steps undertaken by the police to nab Pacheco will reveal their "intentional laxity in not executing the warrant of arrest in right earnest".