Who will give me back my honour, dignity: Mauvin

Panaji: On Monday afternoon, as special judge Irshad Agha pronounced the judgment acquitting transport and industries minister Mauvin Godinho in the alleged power rebate scam, it ended his 27-year-long “wait for justice”.“I only wonder who will give back my honour and dignity that I lost in these 27 years. I wonder if I will ever get what I lost in terms of name and image. I remember earlier days I couldn’t even go to public functions,” Godinho said.He said everybody thought that he had made some mistake. “It was never a case of corruption, never about quid pro quo. All that I did was I issued a notification without going to the cabinet,” he said.Godinho said he wouldn't blame Manohar Parrikar for filing the complaint against him.“Which leader of the opposition would leave a case when the ruling party itself gives readymade material in their hands,” he said, adding that any other politician would have done the same to somebody on the other side of the fence.“I am a seven-time MLA, the senior-most MLA. Because it was notpossible to defeat me politically, they thought they would entangle me in legal battles on all sides.

I consider this a very sweet victory and have emerged much stronger,” Godinho said.Godinho added that the case was already closed but it was then taken to the cabinet and reopened. “Can the cabinet be used as an instrument to reopen a case? This is also a question... the statements given by various witnesses proved that this was purely an abuse of the process of law,” he further said.Godinho was represented by advocate Arun Bras de Sa with Mark Valladares and Sahil Sardessai.