Goa's former tourism minister Mickey Pacheco's bail hearing postponed to Thursday

Panaji: Goa's former Tourism Minister Mickey Pacheco's anticipatory bail hearing, which was suppose to come up in court today, has been postponed till Thursday.

Pacheco is the prime suspect in the mysterious death of his 27-year-old companion Nadia Torrado. Nadia's family is likely to seek CBI inquiry into the case and may move Goa bench of Bombay High Court.

Meanwhile, the anticipatory bail of Pacheco's Officer On Special Duty, Lyndon Monteiro, has been rejected. He is also a suspect in the case.

Pacheco resigned as Goa's Tourism Minister this weekend, and has since been missing. He appealed for anticipatory bail on Tuesday afternoon saying he is being defamed by political rivals, but did not appear in court. The police claim they have no idea where he might be - odd for a man of considerable local prominence.

Documents filed by the Goa police in the sessions court in Margao on Tuesday show that Nadia 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's assistant or Nadia's family.

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The post-mortem shows 11 injuries on Nadia'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.

The accused will be charged with abetment to suicide and culpable homicide not amounting to murder. Apart from Pacheco, also under suspicion are his officer on special duty and Nadia's family. Nadia's mobile phone, passport, laptop and the crucial rat poison tube she is alleged to have consumed have disappeared.

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Nadia 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.

She 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.

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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.

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.