A day after he stayed the warrant issued by a trial court to search Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar’s official residence in Delhi for a missing convicted former Minister, Additional District and Sessions Judge P Sawaikar on Thursday adjourned the hearing related to the warrant till April 27. On Thursday, the court recorded the statement of the petitioner Aires Rodrigues, who reiterated that former Archives and Archaeology Minister Francisco Pacheco, who has been missing since his conviction in a 2006 assault case, was upheld by the Supreme Court a month back. When the hearing resumes on April 27, the court will record the statement of the prosecution, which had appealed against the search warrant issued by Judicial Magistrate First Class (Margao) Bosco Roberts late on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, Roberts had issued the warrant to search Parrikar’s official bungalow 10, Akbar Road, after petitioner, lawyer-activist Aires Rodrigues, alleged that Pacheco was seen in its vicinity earlier this month. The warrant issued on Wednesday afternoon triggered panic in the State administration, with Chief Minister laxmikant Parsekar, who took over the mantle from Parrikar last year, expressing “surprise” at the development.
“It was surprising. But the State filed an appeal and managed to secure a stay on the warrant after consultation with the Advocate General,” Parsekar told The Pioneer. While Pacheco remains untraceable, on Thursday, Goa’s Art and Culture Minister Dayanand Mandrekar suggested that he may have flown the coop and slipped abroad for now, but also added that an elected representative could not stay hiding forever and that he would have to surface especially with the State going for legislative Assembly elections in a couple of years.
“Understand this; the person is not in Goa… If he is on the run, he is abroad, then how much can Goa’s machinery run after him,” Mandrekar said, even as Pacheco has been untraceable by the police since April 10. “All I can say is he cannot stay hiding forever. (He) cannot stay hidden for the rest of his life. He is an elected representative, in two years there are elections he will have to come up,” the Minister added.
The Congress, meanwhile, has described the warrant issued by JMFC to search the Defence Minister’s official bungalow as “first in the history of the country”. “It is the first time in the history of the country that such an order was passed which could only opine that the Judge saw the seriousness of the case,” Congress spokesperson Yatish Naik said.