Goa CM yet to take call on continuation of Pacheco as minister

Goa Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar was today non-committal on whether he will drop state minister Fransisco 'Miccky' Pacheco from his cabinet after the Supreme Court upheld the latter's conviction in a case of abusing and slapping a junior engineer in 2006.
Pacheco, state Rural Development Agency Minister, would have to undergo a six-month jail term as the apex court today upheld the verdict of the Bombay High Court in this regard.
"I have to see the (supreme) court order. I have not gone through it. Without reading the order, I cannot take the decision," Parsekar told PTI, soon after the apex court dismissed the special leave petition (SLP) of Pacheco, now a Goa Vikas Party MLA from Nuvem assembly seat, against the July 17, 2014 verdict of the high court.

As per the order, the minister will now have to undergo imprisonment of six months for abusing and slapping Kapil Natekar, a junior engineer of the government's Electrical Department, in his chamber.
The Goa bench of the high court had set aside the verdict of a revisional court, which had "brought down" the conviction of the MLA under section 323 (causing hurt) from the harsher section 353 (assaulting public servant to deter from duty) of IPC and, instead of sentencing him, ordered his release on "admonition" under the Probation of Offenders Act.
The high court, which had given two weeks' time to the MLA to surrender, had upheld the decision of a lower appellate court to award him a jail term of six months besides a fine of Rs 1,500 in the case.

As per the FIR lodged by Natekar on July 15, 2006, he was called to the minister's office as a telephone call of the latter's personal assistant was not attended to a day before the incident.