Activists booked after they confined engineer in protest

Canacona: On Thursday, police booked the activists involved in locking up the PWD assistant engineer in Canacona on Wednesday.
The activists were protesting against the purported failure of the department to repair roads. The protest occurred days after two people had died in a fatal accident.
Upon the complaint of Deelip Kerkar, assistant engineer, PWD roads, police registered an offence against Janardhan Bhandari, Vikas Bhagat, and two others for criminal trespass, wrongful confinement, and obstructing a government employee from discharging duty.
The speaker of the Goa assembly and local MLA Ramesh Tawadkar had on Wednesday demanded action against the activists. On Thursday, he wanted their arrest.
The activists were angered by the authorities’ alleged laxity in repairing the accident-prone roads in the Canacona section. On Wednesday, the activists were not satisfied with the PWD official’s answers and locked him up in his cabin. Canacona police inspector Chandrakant Gawas freed him.
Bhagat is GFP’s environment cell chairman and Bhandari is a Congress functionary. They said cops should be allowed to do their job.
Earlier, the two offered condolences to the kin of a couple killed in an accident a few days ago. Bhagat said that an elected panch of Shristhal village panchayat is claiming that repair works of four roads in his ward have not been carried out, making him undertake a hunger strike.
The panch, Ramu Naik, broke his fast after PWD officers assured him that the works would begin on or before May 5. If that promise is not kept, Naik said, he will begin an indefinite hunger strike.
“We had once taken an assistant engineer of the PWD in an ambulance to enable the officer to get first-hand experience of the bumpy ride that can hurt patients,” Bhandari said. “In the next five to eight days, the NH-66 road section at Nagorcem got hotmixed.”
Bhandari added, “We are getting faster results with agitations that reflect out-of-the-box thinking.”
Bhagat said, “Let Tawadkar remember the UTTA agitation which he led at Balli. Railway tracks were about to be targeted but the timely intervention from authorities saved hundreds of lives.”