POCSO case: Priest gets bail; cops probe Bishop’s role
Father Malcolm Sequeira, Vicar General, Poona Diocese, the spokesperson for the Bishop, said, “There is no truth in the FIR lodged against the Bishop. This is because the Bishop had reported the matter to the police through the director of the institute where Periera lived. The director had informed the police about the complaint received by the Bishop from the boy's family.”
Pereira’s advocate Milind Pawar also denied the charges against his client.
While Father Vincent Pereira, a priest who is the main accused in a sexual abuse case under POCSO, has been given interim bail, the city police are now investigating the role of the Bishop of the Poona Diocese.
The Pune police had lodged the FIR under POCSO Act against three persons on September 30. Father Pereira, the main accused in sexual abuse of a 15-year-old in December 2021, is also an accused in a similar case of 2018. City police said they are also investigating the role of Thomas Dabre, the Bishop of Poona Diocese, who is also named in the FIR with the Kondhwa police station. “We are investigating the role of the Bishop in connection with the FIR lodged against him under POCSO Act,” said Pune Police Commissioner Amitabh Gupta on Sunday.
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Deputy Commissioner of Police Namrata Patil, who is monitoring the investigation, said, “The Bishop’s name is there in the FIR. We are examining his role.”
The police said Pereira lived in an institute headed by the Bishop. “Under the POCSO Act, anyone who has the knowledge or information of a crime against children has to report it to the police. Otherwise, he too becomes an accused in the case. The family of the victim has told us that they had informed the Bishop about it but he did not act on it. The Bishop, however, has told us that he had sent an email to the police informing them about the complaint received by him…We have sought a copy of the email from him. But it is true that the Bishop has been made the co-accused in the case along with another priest from Mumbai,” said Sardar Patil, senior police inspector from Kondhwa Police Station.
Father Malcolm Sequeira, Vicar General, Poona Diocese, the spokesperson for the Bishop, said, “There is no truth in the FIR lodged against the Bishop. This is because the Bishop had reported the matter to the police through the director of the institute where Periera lived. The director had informed the police about the complaint received by the Bishop from the boy’s family.”
Pereira’s advocate Milind Pawar also denied the charges against his client. “My client is a victim of church politics. The victim’s family had earlier given in writing to the police that they had no case against Pereira and they have sorted out the matter after discussion. And now an FIR has been lodged against him and two other priests who are above 90 years of age,” he said.
Meanwhile, the boy’s father told The Indian Express, “Pereira abused my son at our home on December 4, 2021. Before that, in November, he had asked my son objectionable questions at Pune railway station. On both the occasions, he had given us in writing that he had committed a mistake and sought forgiveness. But we reported the matter to Bishop Thomas Dabre. The Bishop first refused to take cognisance of our complaint. But then, he said he sent the complaint to the Vatican which will take action in three months’ time.”
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The family said that when nothing happened in three months, they went to at least five police stations to lodge an FIR.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
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