The continued incarceration of 45 villages, who were arrested from Sonshi, a rural hamlet located 70 kms from Panaji, for protesting against air pollution and scarcity of water due to iron ore transportation and mining activity respectively has snowballed into a controversy here.
Nearly seven days after their arrest on April 11, while staging a protest against trucks transporting ore, the 45 villagers, including 23 women, continue to languish in the Central Jail at Colvale, unable to shell out the money required to furnish a surety in court, while political parties have started raising questions about the Government action and the Panaji Bench of the Bombay High Court in Panaji on Monday suo motu took cognisance of the plight of the still-in-prison villagers and pollution in their village, which is ringed by mining leases.
Children of Sonshi are bearing the brunt of the police action of April 11, with their parents behind bars, for being unable to pay the money required to furnish the bond.
"There are so many trucks on the road that even going to school is a problem. There is dust everywhere. In our food, water, classrooms, on our faces and clothes. That is why my parents went to protest," says 10-year-old Vasudev Gawde, whose parents are among those arrested.
Sonshi is located in the Sattari sub-district and is a part of Goa's iron-ore rich belt in the hinterland's mining belt. The village in inhabited by a few score houses, many of which are located on the road which connects the iron ore extraction points in the mining leases to a river-jetty, where the ore is dumped with the use of trucks.
While mining was banned for two years in Goa from 2012-14, following the unearthing of a Rs. 35,000 crore scam by a Judicial Commission, iron ore extraction has gradually resumed operation at a moderate scale of 20 million tons per year, compared to around 55 million tons a year, when the industry was at its peak.
But numbers and statistics mean nothing to villagers of Sonshi, whose homes and life continue to get caked in dust, which has also destroyed their horticulture plantations.
"There is no food in the house. My children keep on asking about their father. What should I do. First they took our land, then polluted our place," says Geeta Nile, a housewife.
Police however claim that the arrests of the 45 villagers were made under sections 143, 147, 447, 336, 323, 427, 504, 506 (11) r/w 149 of the Indian Penal Code.
"We have to act as per law. The company has a high court order which clearly states that nobody can stop them from carrying out mining activities in the area. This order was issued by the court after the company had complained against the villagers in 2014 when they tried to stop the trucks," Valpoi Police station in-charge Deepak Pednekar told The Pioneer.
There is hope though for the arrested villagers of Sonshi, as well as those who continue to live in the dusty hamlet, with the Panaji Bench of the Bombay High Court taking suo motu note of their plight.
The court has directed the police as well as pollution control board officials to file a response vis-a-vis the arrests and pollution levels in Sonshi.
A local activist on Tuesday has also petitioned to the Goa Human Rights Commission seeking access to clean air and water for the village's residents.