Panaji: The man who resigned as Goa's Tourism Minister this weekend, and has since been missing, has been named the main suspect in the death of Nadia Torredo, a woman with whom he was in a relationship.
Documents filed by the Goa police on Tuesday in the sessions court in Margao show that Torredo suffered serious injuries from a blunt weapon, and that Pacheco, who belongs to Sharad Pawar's Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), is the police's prime suspect. In its report, the Goa Police also states that evidence related to Nadia's death was destroyed systematically, most likely by Pacheco.
The post-mortem shows 11 injuries on Torredo's arms, thighs, lower lip and chest, allowing the police to now confirm what many women's groups have argued all along - that the 27-year-old's death was not a case of simple suicide.
Torredo died on May 30 in a Chennai hospital. A fortnight before that, she had consumed rat poison. She had first been taken to a local hospital in Goa, then moved to Mumbai, and finally to Chennai.
Torredo died of multi organ failure after consuming rat poison. But what the police want to find out is whether she consumed it herself or she was forced to consume it. Her relatives and Pacheco insist that she died after mistakenly using rat poison instead of toothpaste.
Now, the injuries chronicled in the post-mortem report allow a new theory: that while she died because of the rat poison, her suicide may have been forced.
Pacheco appealed for anticipatory bail on Tuesday afternoon. He did not appear in court but said that he is being defamed by political rivals. The police claims it has no idea where he might be - odd for a man of considerable local prominence.
On Friday, Pacheco was interrogated for nine hours by the police, which at the time was looking into allegations of abetment of suicide. Pacheco's questioning was meant to continue the next day, but he didn't show up. The police then issued a lookout notice for him, and alerted all police stations and airports.