Goa taxi driver hit Russian women with baseball bat

PANAJI - The taxi driver who attempted to rape two Russian women in Goa on Christmas night had also hit one of the women with a baseball bat to prevent their escape, according to their written complaint to the police.

The Anjuna police have registered a case of outraging modesty not amounting to molestation, rather than a case of attempted rape.

In their written complaint to the police which IANS has access to, the two women also said that they went about pounding the doors of nearby homes in Anjuna for help in the early hours Christmas day, but no one came to help them.

“When the driver threatened us, we immediately got down from the car and started running. He removed a baseball bat from the car and hit me on my right leg but we still managed to run and escape them,” one of the women has said in her complaint, adding that they tried to seek refuge from nearby homes in Anjuna, to no avail.

“Nobody came out from their house and we heard some sounds from inside asking us to go away. We then started running through the field to the other houses for help. We lay down under the tree and therefore the driver could not find us. But they continued the search, so we waited for sunrise,” the victim said, adding that the driver Pramod Shirodkar was later joined by two other accomplices who were helping him track them down.

Shirodkar was arrested early Saturday morning, but has been charged with outraging the modesty of a woman, rather than attempt to rape as the women complained of.

Legal representative of the Russian consulate Vikram Varma has said that the statements of the victims would be sent to the Russian consulate officials.

Shirodkar had allegedly tried to rape the two Russian women who attended a Christmas party at a popular night club in Goa in the early hours of Friday. After agreeing to drop them to their hotel for Rs.300 at about 2.30 a.m, he instead took them to Anjuna beach, where he and an accomplice tried to rape them, the police said.

This is not the first instance when Goa police officials have tried to play down complaints affecting women tourists.

It comes less than a month after officials watered down a rape complaint filed by another Russian woman against a local politician of ‘attempted rape’. The case was transferred to the crime branch after it triggered a media frenzy.

–Indo Asian News Service