DARK STORY: (From top) Nadia Torrado; Mickky Pacheco (in green shirt); Torrado’s mother and brother

They called her Joella — the girl who loved fast cars and fast men. But Nadia Torrado didn’t live long to enjoy a life that is now under scrutiny. She was 27 when she died — allegedly after consuming rat poison.

The death, the details of which started trickling out earlier this month, has become the talking point of Goa. After all, it has all the ingredients of a potboiler: a young woman, a missing minister, loads of money, broken marriages, sexual abuse — and a host of unanswered questions.

Nadia Joelle Torrado, called Joella, was a resident of Loutolim in South Goa. The prosecution says that on May 15 she consumed poison from a tube of Ratol, and said in her dying declaration that she thought it was toothpaste. Two weeks later she was dead.

Charges have been levelled at a former Goa minister, Mickky Pacheco. Torrado was said to have been close to Pacheco, who stepped down as Goa’s minister for tourism earlier this month. The charges include culpable homicide and abetment of suicide. If he’s found guilty, he can be jailed for up to 10 years.

Pacheco, whose whereabouts are not known, was with her when she was admitted to Apollo Victor Hospital in Margao in Goa. He signed as her guardian and paid the bills. He then took her to Jupiter Hospital at Thane, the Mumbai suburb, and then to Apollo Hospital in Chennai. Questions are being raised on why Pacheco took her not to any of Mumbai’s top hospitals and then by a chartered aircraft to Chennai.

Nadia’s Singapore-based brother Romell, now in Goa, says that the family is being harassed by the police. Nadia’s mother and two brothers have approached the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court, alleging harassment by the Goa police. They have asked for the probe to be transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation. “We are under severe stress. The case is even more complicated because there’s a minister involved,” Romell says.

The police believe that the family is being forced to keep mum. Since Torrado was widely known as “Mickky’s girl,” the prosecution would like to know the role that he played before and after the death. Pacheco told the Goa crime branch that he was in Nadia’s bedroom on the night of May 14, hours before she is said to have consumed the poison. He also said that he tried to wake her up but she did not respond. It has been found that Torrado had also taken the antidepressant, alprazolam, in addition to Ratol. She could have taken it earlier, which is why she didn’t respond when Pacheco tried to wake her up.

“How did he get entry to the bedroom of a married woman,” questions Sarojini Sardinha, the public prosecutor in the case.

Nobody’s answering questions in Loutolim. Everybody knows that Torrado was married to Winston Barretto, who works at the Park Hyatt in Goa, and that the couple had filed for divorce. Pacheco was married as well — but the details of his broken marriage have been rocking Goa.

In an affidavit before the court of the judicial magistrate (first class) in Margao, his wife of 11 years, Sara, accuses Pacheco of beating and humiliating her for five years before she was “forced out” of her matrimonial home in Benaulim in May 2004.

Sara’s affidavit claims that he had an affair with the couple’s 18-year-old maid and with a Russian prostitute in Dubai when he was a minister. Sara says he beat her, which led to three miscarriages and an abortion.

What troubles the prosecution is that there were unexplained bruises on Torrado’s body as well. The post mortem report says there were 11 injuries, presumably inflicted by a blunt object. This was one of the reasons the sessions court in Margao refused to give anticipatory bail to Pacheco, says Sardinha.

Pacheco was unavailable for comment. The courts will no doubt eventually deliver a verdict on the truth of the matter. And people who knew Torrado don’t remember her as a woman who’d take a beating. She was a strong woman, an athlete and basketball player, who during her college days was known to cycle up to 10km a day, says a former classmate. A teacher at Carmel College, where she studied, says she was a confident girl.

“If any man commented on her (bare) thighs (revealed by shorts), she would go after him, catch him by the collar and slap him,” says one of Pacheco’s associates.

Then Pacheco came in her life. “If he likes a girl, there is nothing that he will not pour on her,” says Auda Viegas, a local women’s right activist and president of Baillancho Ekvott (United Women).

Pacheco, who grew up in a poor family, dropped out of school and became a ladies’ tailor. He worked in Bahrain as a tailor, before diversifying as an agent who got local boys jobs on ships for a hefty fee. Once he had made his money, there was no stopping him.

He would woo his girl with text messages, flooding her with gifts and money, says a source. “Many of these girls are looking for a way to get rich quick; while others come from families ruined by alcoholism and look for love in the wrong places,” says Soter, a local activist who uses only one name.

Nadia was also left scarred by her alcoholic father — who died some years ago. During his drunken bouts, he beat up her mother, Sonia, a teacher at Margao’s Loyola High School. “The alcoholism made Nadia’s family vulnerable,” says a family friend.

But no one is speaking publicly, supposedly because of Pacheco’s clout. The prosecution has alleged that one of Nadia’s brothers told the police that the family had received up to Rs 35 lakh from “unknown” sources when she was in hospital.

To top it, a family maid has told the police that Sonia asked her to burn several bags of clothes and papers immediately after her death. The police have found remnants of a Qatar Airways boarding pass which hints that Nadia was travelling as Pacheco’s spouse.

The case is slowly unfurling. But each disclosure is making it more and more mysterious. Joella is dead, but her spectre haunts the state.