Panjim, Oct. 14: Police today booked a Goa minister’s son on the charges of statutory rape, molestation and sending lewd text messages to a German teenager, and charged the minister with abetment.

The police raided the home of education minister Atanasio Babush Monseratte but said they found neither him nor son Rohit, 21, accused by a Goa-based German researcher of harassing her 14-year-old daughter.

Yet, Monseratte surfaced to meet chief minister Digambar Kamat this evening and then told reporters his son was innocent. He accused the police of seeking revenge against him and demanded a probe by an impartial agency.

The controversy had taken a violent turn last night when alleged Monseratte supporters beat up activist Aires Rodrigues, who runs the NGO Utt Goenkara and has been supporting the German researcher Fadella Fuch, while he dined at a Panjim hotel.

Fuch has been researching Indian mythology for over a decade on a long-term visa, and her daughter studies at an open school in Goa.

Fuch, who had lodged a police complaint on October 2 against Rohit, had a few days ago accused the police of non-co-operation under pressure from Monseratte, a United Goans Democratic Party leader. She alleged that Monseratte’s wife and two others had approached her with a request to withdraw the complaint.

The charges mirror an earlier one by British tourist Fiona McKeown, whose 15-year-old daughter Scarlett Keeling was allegedly raped and murdered on a Goa beach a few months ago. McKeown had alleged that local VIPs were involved and had pressured the police into scuttling the probe.

The police today booked Monseratte and Rohit under sections dealing with outraging a woman’s modesty, attempted robbery, abetment, publishing obscene information in electronic form and statutory rape (sex with a minor) under the Goa Children’s Act.

The statutory rape charge is punishable with a life term and the obscene messages, if proved, can put Rohit in jail for five years.