The Ponda police are on the lookout for Dhananjay Bhave, the accused booked in Mangueshi temple molestation cases of two girls after Additional District and Sessions Court in Ponda on Saturday rejected two anticipatory bail applications filed by the priest.
He was booked for allegedly molesting two women inside the temple in June this year.
A senior police official in South Goa District headquarters told The Hindu on request of anonymity that the accused Dhananjay Bhave could not be traced, after the court in Ponda, located in South Goa district, cancelled both his applications for anticipatory bail. “He is absconding.”
“We are on the lookout for him,” another senior official in Ponda police station told The Hindu later in the afternoon, adding that they will began procedure in this regard to track him down.
Last month, Bhave was booked in two separate cases under section 354 (outraging modesty) of the Indian Penal Code, after two victims, including a Goan-origin student studying medicine in the U.S. and another Mumbai-based Goan girl, complained to the police separately that the priest had allegedly molested them by hugging and kissing them near the sanctum sanctorum of the Mangueshi temple, while they were on a temple visist and while their parents were busy with prayers in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple.
Before approaching the police, the complainants had approached the Shree Manguesh Devasthan Committee, which had said that it could not find any dependable evidence to establish a prima facie case against Bhave and had advised the victims and their parents to approach “appropriate authority” with their complaints.
The priest stands suspended from temples services following FIRs registered against him by police.
An application against rejection of both bail applications of Bhave, will be filed in Bombay High Court at Goa, lawyer of the accused, Shashikant Joshi said. He was waiting for the order, he said on Saturday afternoon.
