ACTION AT LAST (paedophilia)
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
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.
August 21, 2004
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main5.asp?filename=Ne082104ACTION.asp