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ACTION
AT LAST
After
the initial stonewalling, Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar has woken
up and announced a slew of measures to check paedophilia in the state. The
police have launched a crackdown on pederasts. Known child abusers have
gone into hiding. Local bodies, including the Church and colleges, are launching
awareness campaigns to educate the local population about child abuse by
foreigners. VK Shashikumar and Mayabhushan Nagvenkar
report
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| TIME
UP: Jorg Harry Ringelmann avoids reporters after being served deportation
orders |
The Tehelka exposé
on tourism-related paedophilia caught Manohar Parrikar’s BJP-led government
in Goa off-guard. Leading TV news channel Aaj Tak broadcast the exposé
on August 5 and, around the same time, the full 40-minute film was screened
for a select gathering of top Goan police officers. The next day the Tehelka
investigative film, The Nexus of Silence, was screened for the public in
Caritas Holiday Home, Panjim. It was also telecast on a local cable channel.
Finally, Parrikar had to bow to public pressure and announce a series of
measures to check child sex tourism in Goa. The cm also said that he would
release the Ric Wood report on child sex tourism in Goa this week. This
is the first substantive move on Parrikar’s part after his bizarre
reaction at a press conference where he implied that the Tehelka sting was
carried out at the behest of pederasts. “The Ric Wood report mentions
that ‘such’ broadcasts by the news channels is just the kind
of modus that have been used by paedophiles to popularise child sex tourism
destinations,” Parrikar had claimed. “More paedophiles would
now flock to Goa’s shores,” he added.
A day after the screening, Deputy Inspector General Narinder Singh Randhawa
claimed that Jorg Harry Ringelmann, a suspected paedophile, had fled to
Mumbai. Suddenly Ringelmann returned on Monday, claiming that he had gone
on a tour to Mumbai and Pune. The moment he arrived he was escorted to the
North Goa district police headquarters, where Additional Superintendent
of Police AK Gawas served a deportation order on him. He was asked to report
again the following day with his residential permit and a confirmed ticket
to his native country, Germany.
Television channels caught Ringelmann hiding behind his file of documents.
He had a tough time as he tried to avoid the local press that had gathered
at the Porvorim police station. While the police authorities were not willing
to speak officially on the issue, sources informed that Ringelmann would
be deported, as he was an “undesirable element” with incomplete
documentation to support his claims on both the girls he was living with.
Interestingly, Ringelmann’s lawyer, Vilas Thaly, is a Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh member and the state’s former additional advocate general, with
a penchant for controversies. Thaly told a private news channel that he
would challenge the deportation order issued by the police. One of the points
Ringelmann emphatically made during his meeting with sp Gawas was that his
‘wife’ Dimple was six months pregnant and that he planned to
start a restaurant in Chopdem. Police sources claim that the deportation
order is only a consequence of some malpractices committed by the German
in his business and has nothing to do with paedophilia.
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August 21, 2004
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