By Frederick Noronha, IANS
Panaji : An Italian in Goa has given a new twist to the state's intense debate over paedophilia by filing a Rs. 60 million lawsuit against a non-profit charitable trust that campaigns for such issues.
South Goa-based Italian national Giorgio Lazinni, 59, recently filed a lawsuit against campaigners from the Jan Ugahi group in Margao, the headquarters of South Goa, for writing articles that were put out in cyberspace that linked his name with paedophilia allegations.
In November 2004, Lazinni had faced trial in the Children's Court in Goa for allegedly having wrongfully confined a minor girl in his house. He later faced charges of sexually abusing and raping her.
Goa Children's Court president A.D. Salkar had, however, given Lazinni the benefit of the doubt and acquitted him.
Lazinni's counsel has now made the case that he had been defamed in various articles but the Jan Ugahi had "failed to inform the world about him being found not guilty of the offence of rape or any other offences".
While the NGO took credit for its speedy follow-up on that case – allowing for critical medical evidence to be found – Lazinni's lawyers have argued that he had been "falsely charge-sheeted by the Colva Police at the instance of the defendants (Jan Ugahi)".
The lawyers said Lazinni was doing business in Italy and co-owned a factory used to manufacture fishing equipment. He was also imparting lessons for deep-sea fishing, according to information submitted.
Highlighted in the case are articles published in the law-related journal Combat Law, the Portuguese-language SuperGoa.com electronic mailing list and the journalists' network Goajourno, among others.
Earlier, lawyer Anacleto Viegas, who is also actively involved in local politics, had sent legal notices to websites and electronic mailing lists over this case and another case involving a German national, Gunter Backmann.
Lazinni had argued that a search on Google.com for his name threw up a number of articles pertaining to what the Jan Ugahi team had written. Jan Ugahi's work has been widely covered and written about positively by the national media.
Lazinni's lawyers argued in court that it became difficult for him "to even travel abroad as his bio-data can be scanned and there is every possibility of the NGO-written article, which is totally baseless, false and malicious, being viewed by the passport authorities which at any point of time can cause immense damage" to his character and prospects of travelling worldwide.
Filing for Rs. 60 million in damages, his lawyers argued that Lazinni had "lost his only source of income and has suffered a loss of more than Rs.30 million invested by him in business".
In addition, they also sought additional Rs.30 million for "loss of reputation, loss of business, compensation for wrongful detention, and loss of time and money in defending false cases".
In the paedophilia case, the mother of the young girl had herself filed the complaint but later failed to support the prosecution's case. Her daughter had worked at Lazinni's home and was promised Rs.1,500 for watering plants.
After working for two days at Lazinni's home, the girl returned to her own house. The mother had been cross-examined by the public prosecutor on the grounds that the witness was suppressing the truth.
The girl herself faced delays in cross-examination, as the things sent for examination to the Central Forensic Science Laboratory in Hyderabad had not been received. Later, she did not appear before the court.
Medical experts had, however, found that the girl had been subjected to recent forcible sexual and anal intercourse. But the judge ruled that the medical evidence could not be used against Lazinni "in the absence of the evidence of the victim and in (the) absence of other circumstantial evidence on record to show that Lazinni sexually abused her".
Lazzini's lawyers also said that the "defamatory allegations" had been made "for no rhyme or reason and are totally false and are displayed on the website only to torture the plaintiff as he is a foreigner".
They also charged that the allegations had been made to portray the organisation as a "social service organisation and secure funds for themselves from foreign foundations".
Goa has been repeatedly hit by concerns about paedophilia. Most victims are the children of poor migrant labourers from neighbouring states like Karnataka.
In the 1990s, a sensational case involving the abuse of young boys in an orphanage came out in the open following the arrest of Freddy Peat who claimed to be an Anglo-Indian. After his arrest on April 3, 1991, and subsequent trial, Peat died in a Goa jail not long ago.
In 2004, investigative website and weekly Tehelka did a sting operation to highlight the authorities' lackadaisical approach to sexual abuse of children in Goa.
It named six foreigners, and said its lengthy investigations had shown them to be directly involved in paedophilia. Three of them were from Britain, one was a German and another Dutch while the sixth was unidentified.