VIBHA VERMA
PANJIM: If you are a woman or a child and in distress, think twice before you call up the Goa Police's Women and Child Protection Unit (WCPU). They are notorious for ignoring phone calls.
In what appears to be yet another case of carelessness, the WCPU left at least five calls from a local unattended, who desperately wanted to inform about the pathetic condition of a girl in Siolim yesterday morning.
After initial reluctance, however, the tormentar of the girl (her own husband) was finally arrested, not by the WCPU but the Mapusa police. The arrest was effected yesterday evening with much humiliation to the victim, who was seeking justice and was summarily denied succour by the Women and Child Protection Unit.
It was a journalist, a GT staffer, who had found the girl on the roadside at Siolim, and played samaritan to rescue the 14-year-old.
The GT staffer found the seemingly desperate child sobbing bitterly under the shade of a mango tree. On inquiries with her, he discovered that she was married about four months ago to a married man who had driven his previous wife and their three children away.
Her husband Ismael Tiwari (28), who is now in the custody of Mapusa police, had brought the victim girl from Karnataka and eventually married her.
“Life with this man was like living in hell,” the tender girl told the GT staffer who referred her to the Mapusa police station after failing in his attempts at the WCPU. The girl with her two small bags packed with clothes wanted to go to a cousin who lived at the Mapusa housing board, but didn't know the cousin's name or address in the colony. At the Mapusa police station, the girl disclosed that her husband used to assault her and unable to bear her trauma she shared her fate with her divorced mother, who in fact had pushed her into the marriage with Tiwari as she had two other younger girl children to look after.
“The girl told the police that she was constantly being harassed by her husband and demanded cash from her mother,” a police officer told GT adding that her statement was recorded in the presence of NGO members. Tiwari has been booked under section 8 of Goa Children’s Act, 2003 and section 498 (harassment) of Indian Penal Code.
Goa Medical College sources said, the girl was examined for about two-hours to ascertain physical and sexual assault on her. She will also be subjected to an ossification test, to ascertain her exact age, Mapusa police said.
Care-a-damnattitude
When he found the hapless girl, the GT staffer made several attempts to contact WCPU, but not one of the six calls made were attended to by anybody. He then called 108 but it was not functioning and so he called Apna Ghar at Merces, where ‘come through proper channel’ was the terse response he got.
Skeptical of the 'proper channel' route, the GT staffer then dialed 100, and then things began falling in place with Mapusa police swinging into action and PSI Mohan Naik and a lady constable, Reshma Naik reaching the spot to escort the victim to the police station.
