‘Goa home minister mute spectator to police-drug nexus’

PANAJI - A Congress legislator and top cricket official in Goa Tuesday said state home minister Ravi Naik and the police chief were mute spectators when it came to handling the investigation pertaining to the police-politician-drug mafia nexus.

Police had implicated him by booking him for criminal conspiracy, Goa Cricket Association (GCA) president Dayanand Narvekar told reporters three days after he was charged with forging his son’s birth certificate four times to facilitate his eligibility for a state level under-15 team.

“Going by this logic, tomorrow someone will demand that a criminal conspiracy case be lodged against the home minister and the DGP (director general of police) in the police-drug nexus as they were silent spectators to the happenings all this while,” he said.

Naik and the police force have been accused by the opposition and even the ruling Congress of colluding with the drug mafia and watering down cases against two Israeli drug dealers who were arrested earlier.

One of the drug dealers, Yaniv Benaim alias Atala, has also been linked to Naik’s son, Roy.

Narvekar also questioned the logic behind the police booking his son for conspiracy.

“How could my son conspire when he was just a toddler? He was just two when the certificates were allegedly forged,” said Narvekar, a former vice president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI).

The former deputy chief minister, his son Ganeshraj, wife Sushma and relative Ravindra Chodankar have been booked for forgery, criminal conspiracy and using as genuine a forged document.