Team Goemkarponn
BENAULIM: AAP Velim MLA Cruz Silva has demanded strict accountability for repeated incidents involving narcotics, mobile phones and other prohibited articles at Central Jail Colvale, saying that merely ordering enquiries, transferring staff or shifting inmates will not address the underlying problem.
Silva said the government has conducted investigations and enquiries and transferred personnel in the past, yet similar incidents continue to surface at the prison.
“The answer is not another enquiry. The answer is accountability,” Silva said, demanding that staff members, officers or government servants found responsible for facilitating such activities or committing serious dereliction of duty be suspended and, where guilt is established under law and service rules, terminated.
His statement comes amid the latest developments at Colvale Jail, including the arrest of a GHRDC security staffer over an alleged attempt to carry narcotics into the prison, followed by the arrest of an inmate. Prison authorities have also reportedly recovered mobile phones and SIM cards during searches.
Silva said the latest incident should not be treated in isolation, pointing to repeated seizures of prohibited items as evidence of what he described as a systemic security failure.
“A prison is a controlled environment. A mobile phone or narcotic substance cannot simply appear inside. There has to be a failure of security, supervision or, if established, deliberate facilitation. Responsibility must therefore be fixed,” he said.
The MLA stressed that criminal investigations must continue, but departmental accountability should proceed simultaneously. He said negligence, collusion or deliberate facilitation, if established, should invite strict departmental action.
Silva also called for a comprehensive review of the prison security system, including entry and exit checks, CCTV monitoring, staff deployment, inmate searches, mobile-phone detection and supervision of personnel.
“We cannot keep celebrating seizures and arrests while ignoring how the contraband reached inside in the first place. The real success will be when drugs and phones stop entering Colvale Jail,” he said.
Silva said Colvale Jail is meant to function as a corrective institution and urged the government to move “from enquiries to accountability, from transfers to responsibility and from arrests to dismantling the entire network.”
