Goa unsafe, says bereaved dad

Goa unsafe, says bereaved dad
TNN
PANAJI: Remember retired headmaster BB Pradhan from Mahesh Bhatt’s Saaransh, who is forced to visit various offices to collect the ashes of his
son killed in America? Sometimes real life does imitate reel life. Dmitry Prosnyakov, a Russian, lost his son in 2007 and two years later he is in Goa to seek clues of why and how his son was murdered.

Unlike Pradhan who gets his son’s ashes, Prosnyakov has not been so lucky. On the contrary, his experience in the state has upset him enough to say that Goa is “not a safe place”. “As soon as I reach Russia I will write to the foreign affairs ministry stating that Goa is not a safe place. People in Russia need to know about it, so that young children like Anton don’t come to Goa in search of love and peace and get killed.”

His son Anton, a student of aeronautical engineering in Russia, had gone missing in November 2007. Anton had arrived in New Delhi from Russia on August 25, 2007 with his girlfriend Marina Pulina, 22. They travelled to Srinagar, Leh, Mumbai and arrived in Goa in October 2007. They stayed initially at Vagator and then moved to Chapora. With no news from their son for a long time, Anton’s parents complained to the Russian foreign affairs ministry that their son had been missing since November 2007. The decomposed body was found in the bushes at Vagator.

It took some 18 months to confirm that the dead body was that of their son. When DNA tests and super imposition tests confirmed the body as that of Anton, they tried to get the body, but were informed by the police that the body had been “cremated” even as the DNA report was awaited from Hyderabad. Finally, only Anton’s skull was sent recently to Russia.

Prosnyakov on Sunday visited the Hindu crematorium where his son was cremated. He broke down by the river Mandovi, where he was told his son’s ashes were immersed. “It was important for me to visit the place where my son was cremated”, he said.

12 October 2009, The Times of India, Goa edition