Visits wife, daughters in hospital; not allowed to meet them or pass on snacks he brought

Almost a month after 60-year-old Francis Gomes was arrested — he was let out on bail later— for allegedly keeping his wife and three daughters captive for seven years in a small flat in Vasai, he arrived on Monday at Byculla’s J J Hospital with a big bag of snacks for his family members who are under treatment at the psychiatry department of the government hospital.

Gomes, who has been also accused of having starved them under captivity, was neither allowed to meet them nor hand over the food to them.

Clad in a striped shirt, a towel wrapped like a scarf and a cap pulled low over his ears, Gomes trudged into the psychiatric ward OPD of J J Hospital around 1 pm, carrying a white polythene bag containing wafers, biscuits and cakes.

A woman, who claimed to be a relative, accompanied him.

After a few minutes of talk with the doctors, he tried to enter the ward where his family is recovering but was turned away at the door by a wardboy who also refused to take the food.

“My daughters are really fond of eating these and I know they would have welcomed me visiting them. But the doctors didn’t allow me to meet them. I have been labelled a psycho when all I wanted was to shield my family from dangerous elements in society. My wife has been mentally unstable from the beginning and my daughters have suffered molestation and eve-teasing and on occasions even asked me to accompany them to college. My wife’s brother has misled the NGO to separate my family from me. I deny all that has been written about me ill-treating my family,” said Gomes.

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