September, 2013 – April, 2014
In late September 2013 Naomi who was visiting from
Israel again accompanied me to court.
The courtroom was almost empty and none of my lawyers were present. The prosecutor told the judge that Sachin was
on leave so I was rescheduled for a month later. The following date I was the only one in the
gallery and at the front of the courtroom were three clerks and one other
lawyer. Once again Sachin was a no show
and the judge said that a warrant would be put out for him to appear next time. A warrant for the top cop who fabricated the
case against me, yet another head shaker.
Mid November produced another WTF moment. This time Sachin wasn’t there because he had
to attend a meeting for the security for an upcoming Goan film festival...yes,
that sounds more important.
On December 5th I was amazed to actually
see Sachin at the courthouse. But don’t
count your chickens till they’ve hatched Dave.
Our case was called up at the start of the proceedings and then we were
told to sit down again. Sachin had the
audacity to sit behind me in the gallery and whisper into my ear: “Today’s the
day that David goes free.” Yeah right, I
guess you don’t know how this supposed judicial system works here Sachin,
there’s no way it will be finished today.
I tried to minimize my interaction with him. Other Indians have told me that this is the
best strategy with all policemen. Don’t
be mean to them and don’t even be nice to them, just try to be neutral and
invisible if possible. He asked whether
I was still paragliding and I just nodded yes, not looking back at him. Another case was called up first to hear a
witness as there were five people in custody so they received priority. By the time the cross examination was completed
there was no time left in the morning session.
Come back next year please.
In mid January, now into 2014 (remember, I was
arrested in December, 2010), I arrived at the courthouse but the gates to the
parking lot were locked shut and no vehicles were inside. I went to another entrance and a couple of
lawyers were coming out and they explained to me that the court was closed for
the day due to a Muslim holiday.
Huh? Didn’t they know this ahead
of time? Why was I scheduled for court
today? Supposedly this Eid is based on
the lunar cycle and is only determined 4-5 days prior. C’mon, we know the lunar cycle folks. I called Caroline and she told me to come
back to court the next day to get a new date.
Returning to the courthouse, as I walked up the stone stairs I saw a
piece of paper stuck to the wall next to the “No Spitting” sign (which I think
is hilarious that they need to have).
The sheet listed all of the statutory holidays for 2014 and the Muslim
holiday was on it. At the top of the
paper I saw that it was printed in late December. It sure would have been nice for my lawyers
to just give me a call and save me a couple of trips to Mapsa, but that would have
been the logical thing to do.
The next date the public prosecutor was sick. The one after that, no judge as he was
involved in some process of appointing a new judge to a higher court so in fact
the NDPS court hadn’t been functioning for a couple of weeks. In March once again Sachin didn’t show and my
next date wasn’t for seven weeks, at the end of April.
Okay, this is bordering on the ridiculous but
finally, on the tenth time that I had gone to Mapsa for Sachin’s
testimony it finally happened. It took
almost two hours and the first hour seemed incredibly wasteful and
inefficient. Sachin took the stand and
answered a few questions such as his name and rank. Then the judge proceeded to dictate Sachin’s
written statement in the charge sheet to the stenographer. Couldn’t this have been typed up by a clerk
beforehand? Sachin got impatient and
left the stand to sit down. Then he was
in and out of the courtroom. I thought
“What a dick! I’ve been waiting three
years for this, at least you can be patient for an hour!”
A new stenographer took over on the computer and
within a couple of minutes he managed to crash Word and couldn’t reopen the
file. Yikes, had we just lost the past
hour’s work? Caroline piped up to the
judge and said that I was a computer engineer and perhaps I could help. Judge D’Costa asked if I would come up so I
crossed the courtroom, passed in front of Sachin and then stepped up to the
seemingly sacred judge’s desk and sat down at the computer. It felt strange to be on the other side
looking down on the gallery, albeit a pretty empty one. Within a minute of me starting to investigate
the problem a courthouse technician arrived and recovered the file. Nonetheless I think it scored me some
brownie points with the judge.
One of the other senior lawyers of my firm, Raju,
performed most of the cross examination.
As usual, I couldn’t hear all of the proceedings nor could I follow some
of the technicalities that Raju was exposing.
Afterwards I spoke with Caroline to see how she felt it had gone and she
was pleased. Then who walked up, well
Sachin of course. He extended his hand
so I was obliged to shake it. He once
again asked whether I was still paragliding.
He then flipped back and forth between English and Konkani talking with
Caroline and he said that the paragliding actually was an illegal
activity. She mentioned something about
Goa Tourism but he shook his head indicating that it wasn’t a sanctioned
sport. Oh yeah Sachin, and by the way,
committing perjury like you did for the past two hours is slightly illegal too!
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