Bengaluru: Fiftyfive-year-old Farida, wife of the late Shafiulla, has no known sources of income. Living with her two sons Mubarak and Jamshid in Sharif Nagar of the Yeshwantpur police station limits, she is said to have been leading a luxurious lifestyle over the past years.
Slowly the murky details of her ganja trading business began trickling out. She with the help of her sons and other associates have been befriending the younger generation – college students in particular – at colleges, shopping malls, cinema-houses, railway stations and parks and lure them into the habit of abuse of ganja.
The ill-gotten wealth was used by the woman and her sons to lead a high-profile style of living. But the police were concerned about their ruining the careers and lives of the younger generation by getting them addicted to narcotics. She had escaped arrest a few times at the time raids.
Through the past years, she has been booked in ten cases in Yeshwantpur station alone. She was arrested a few times, but every time after she came out on bail, she persistently continued her illegal activity.
To put a final check on her activity, the police, after following proper procedures and under the guidance of city police commissioner M N Reddi, have now declared her as a proclaimed offender under the Karnataka Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug-offenders, Gamblers, Goondas (Immoral Traffic Offenders, Slum-grabbers and Video or Pirates) Act 1985 is more commonly known as the Goonda Act.
Thus she becomes the first-ever woman to be officially declared a goonda in the state. Her sons Mubarak and Jamshid also have cases of crime filed against them in the Yeshwantpur police station. They too, in spite of arrests and subsequent bail, have been indulging in crimes, said the police. Finally, it was decided to invoke the Goonda Act against the mother.
About the Act:
The Karnataka Prevention of Dangerous Activities of Bootleggers, Drug-offenders, Gamblers, Goondas (Immoral Traffic Offenders, Slum-grabbers and Video or Pirates) Act 1985 is more commonly known as the Goonda Act.
Recently it was amended to include a new category, that of video and audio pirates, under the Indian Copyright Act 1957 and the Information Technology Act, 2000.
Enquiries with legal experts and police sources have revealed that the following rules will apply to anyone charged under the Goonda Act.
1. He / she cannot file a bail application for charges in any previous case
2. No one, including his / her lawyers and relatives, can visit him / her in the jail
3. Only the DGP of prisons can permit such a visit
4. He / she cannot question his / her detention under the Act, except through a caveat in the state high court much before invoking of the Act.
