By IANS,
Panaji: An RTI activist Monday filed a complaint alleging that a police official at the behest of the state home minister had threatened him and other activists to delete a crucial name “Roy” from his criminal complaint against officials and politicians involved in the drug mafia nexus case.
Kashinath Shetye, who has in the past succeeded in using the RTI act to expose systemic corruption over the last two years, in his complaint to the special Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) court has said that sub inspector Sudesh Naik had threatened him and other complainants to drop the name of one “Roy” from the complaint.
Roy is incidentally the name of Goa Home Minister Ravi Naik’s son, who has been repeatedly linked to the drug mafia over the last year after a Swedish model and a former girlfriend of an Israeli drug dealer exposed the nexus between the police-politicians and the drug mafia here.
“Sudesh Naik claimed to be acting on the instructions of home minister, SP (Crime Branch) Mangaldas Desai and DySP Shamba Sawant, who had sent him with a threat of consequences to be conveyed to the said applicants in the event they failed to comply,” Shetye has said in his complaint.
The complaint, which was filed by 13 citizens last month, which includes government officials, teachers as well as college lecturers, says Roy (named without the surname) had asked the police to probe the police-politician-drug mafia nexus which included “One Mr Roy, who has a substantial presence in the drug industry as a drug lord”.
The complaint also states that “Roy was connected to powerful ministers in the government of Goa”.
Incidentally, the home minister’s son, has also been named by Fiona Mackeown, the mother of slain UK teenager Scarlett Keeling of having links to the drug mafia in a Goa court during the trial of her daughter’s sexual assault and subsequent death.
Naik has denied these charges and said that the Roy mentioned in the complaint could not be his son. “There are several Roys who are active in politics and whose names have come up in such cases,” Naik said.