Former Goa Minister and MLA Mickky Pacheco surrendered before Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) court in Margao on Monday.
He was absconding for nearly two months following his conviction in a case of assault on a government servant.
The Goa police who had been after him for last two months had declared a reward of Rs. 25,000 to any person who can give his whereabouts.
There are several other criminal cases booked against Pachecco, who Pacheco told the JMFC court after his surrender that he had just arrived from Delhi on Monday and surrendered before the court.
Nuvem MLA Pacheco, who until April 3 was Rural Development Minister in Goa’s BJP-led government, has to undergo a six month jail sentence imposed by the Bombay High Court at Goa on July 17 last year for having in assaulted a Electricity department Junior Engineer Kapil Natekar in 2006.
The Supreme Court on March 30 upheld the High Court order while dismissing the Special Leave Petition filed by Mickky Pacheco. The Supreme Court on May 11 also dismissed his plea for further time to surrender.
Meanwhile, the hearing on the proclamation proceedings issued against Pacheco was supposed to come up for hearing before Margao JMFC Pooja Kavlekar on June 4.
Advocate Aires Rodrigues had been publicly ridiculing the Goa police for their failure to arrest Pacheco while they also accused State BJP government of protecting him.
Mr. Rodrigues who had recently filed a petition in High Court demanding that Pacheco search be handed over to the CBI, told The Hindu on Monday that now that Pacheco has surrendered there should be complete probe to ascertain where he was hiding as a lot of public money has been spent in his search by police. He also argued that Pacheco had lied before the JMFC that he arrived in Goa on Monday and asserted that he was very much in Goa for over 15 days.
