The group ransacked the Ganesh Colony house in Mapusa for a few hours, fleeing with jewellery and cash worth Rs 35 lakh. That was, on 7 October.
The crime sparked outrage over the state of law and order in Goa. As it made headlines, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant and police chief Alok Kumar visited the Ghanekars and promised to expedite the probe.
Police blamed the incident on a Bangladesh-based gang, which -- they said -- was behind a similar robbery attempt in Goa earlier in April.
So far, police have arrested two suspects -- Raju B (27) and Safikul Amir (37) -- a Bangladesh citizen. But the key accused, who was last traced by investigators in Hyderabad, managed to evade arrest, and is believed to have fled to the neighbouring country.
"I have been born and brought up entirely in Mapusa. I'd never heard anything of this sort. This was unprecedented. And it left us, as well as others in the neighbourhood, terrified," Dr Mahendra Ghanekar, a gynaecologist at a government hospital, told ThePrint.
As the case sparked outrage, the Goa government in November invoked the stringent National Security Act (NSA), 1980, which empowers district magistrates to order the detention of individuals without formal charges for up to 12 months.
It was only the second time over a decade that NSA was imposed in Goa; the last being in 2012, when the then government under late CM Manohar Parrikar said it was to curb extortion cases and crimes targeting tourists.
Officially, the state government maintains that invoking NSA became a necessity. But crime statistics tell a different story.
Between January and November this year, Goa recorded 24 murders -- one fewer than the 25 logged in the same period last year. Burglaries dropped from 125 to 84. Snatching incidents fell from 30 to 21. Only theft showed a marginal uptick, from 278 to 285 cases.
By these measures, crime in Goa hasn't surged. In some categories, it declined.
"The data will tell you the complete picture of crime in Goa. Forget the number of crimes -- even calls to police control rooms have fallen this year," a senior state government official told ThePrint on the condition of anonymity.
Also Read: Goa, Kerala lose sheen as more foreign tourists pick Maharashtra & Bengal, shows RBI data
Weeks before the Mapusa dacoity, it was a daylight attack on an activist that rung alarm bells in Goa.
On 18 September, streets in north Goa's Caranzalem were bustling with traffic when Rama Kankonkar finished his lunch at a restaurant and stepped outside. Just as he did, five men surrounded him, and a sixth stood at a distance, phone raised, filming.
"You ST, you want to become the protector of Goa," Kankonkar recalls his attackers shouting, apparently using the constitutional designation for Scheduled Tribes as a slur.
The men beat him with wire cables, and forced cow dung into his mouth, all the time capturing the incident on camera.
The brazenness of the attack catalysed Opposition outrage. Panaji's streets were filled with protesters the next day, demanding accountability.
Police also swung into action. Seven men -- Suresh Naik alias Booky, Manish, Anthony Nadar, Francis Nadar, Minguel Araujo, Sairaj Govekar and Franco -- were arrested within 24 hours of the assault.
But the charge sheet, filed in the case on 16 November, hinted at a more sinister plot.
According to police, the conspiracy began four days before the assault. Its mastermind, the charge sheet said, was Zenito Cardozo, a man with 16 criminal cases against him, including a 2009 double murder at a restaurant in Siridao village, where he allegedly stabbed to death two people.
Cardozo, police said, coordinated the attack through WhatsApp calls. He was allegedly tracking Kankonkar's movements and feeding location updates to the group of six.
"Accordingly, they hatched a conspiracy to assault Rama Kankonkar and since 14.09.2025, they started following Rama Kankonkar with wire cables and cow dung. Accused Zenito Cardozo was providing them information regarding the whereabouts of Rama Kankonkar," the charge sheet read.
The men, according to police, had form. Earlier in the year, they were allegedly involved in another incident in south Goa, where shots were fired between gang members. This wasn't isolated violence; it was organised crime, police argued.
But Kankonkar disputed the police's findings. He believes that the assault was politically motivated.
"They were saying, 'You are spoiling our MLA's name.' Then they asked if I wanted the ST portfolio," Kankonkar told ThePrint. The activist said the accused had followed him months ago as well, and Zenito was associated with the ruling party for a while.
Also Read: CEO accused of killing 4-yr-old son in Goa was 'triggered' by court order giving husband visiting rights
As criticism over the Kankonkar assault grew, Goa's Director General of Police (DGP) Alok Kumar wrote to the state's home department in the last week of September, proposing that NSA be invoked to rein in organised crime syndicates.
In its proposal, the police chief said that since August, "many offenders have been taken into custody", but these measures were "proving insufficient to neutralise repeat offenders and organised elements".
The government agreed. Starting 5 November, the state empowered district magistrates in South and North Goa for three months to invoke NSA when "it is necessary to do so", the government's notice read.
The government official quoted above said the two crimes had "alarmed the establishment".
"NSA provisions were invoked to rein in organised crime syndicates, an aspect that emerged during the investigation of the cases," the official said.
Since the government's notice, NSA has not been invoked to detain anyone in the state.
Goa Congress vice-president Tulio de Souza told ThePrint that the two cases had "exposed a total collapse of security apparatus" in the state.
"These cases clearly suggested the perpetrators had studied and prepared their plans well in advance. The state's implementation of laws has been very lax. These were not isolated incidents. They were carried out in a calculated manner," de Souza said.
But invoking NSA, he said, won't make much of a difference in reining in crimes.
"Have they been able to do it? No," he said, pointing to the deaths of 25 people at a nightclub fire in North Goa on 6 December. Investigation into the blaze found that the nightclub owners and management had flouted several safety rules, including the mandatory norm to lay down emergency exits.
Amit Palekar, the chief of Aam Aadmi Party's Goa unit, held a similar view. NSA, he said, was an "eyewash".
"NSA can't be invoked just for the sake of it, and for messaging. I don't think the government had any intention to use NSA on criminals. It was just an eyewash. It's a complete administrative failure, not only a police failure," he said.
But cabinet minister Digambar Kamat defended the government's move and said invoking NSA was an "act of confidence-building" and a "precautionary measure" ahead of tourist season.
"Opposition can make a lot of noise about law and order, but please go and find the data about crimes in the state over the last years. It has not increased one bit, let alone to alarming levels," he said.
Another state Minister Subhash Shirodkar said law and order has only improved. "Some isolated incidents do not paint the picture that the Opposition is painting," he said, adding that the need for NSA will be reviewed by the Chief Minister after three months.
Human rights activist and advocate Albertina Almeida agreed that invoking NSA appeared to be more about "messaging".
"It is just a cover to say something has been done after outrage over disorder in the state. It shifts the onus from a defaulting governance, and gives (the government) a tool against political dissenters," she said.
Also Read: How North Goa went from a stop on a hippie trail to a nightclub hub built on big money & lax oversight
Rattled by the crimes, some in Goa took to blaming migrant workers.
Prominent among them was the Chief Minister, who declared in the days after invoking NSA, "If we analyse the increasing incidents, we will find that migrants are involved in maximum of these cases."
It wasn't the first time. In May 2023, Sawant had claimed that nearly 90 per cent of crimes in Goa were committed by migrant labourers from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and other states. When criticised, he claimed his statement made in Konkani had been "twisted and misinterpreted".
Ashish Sirodkar -- a hotel owner who was earlier BJP's youth wing president -- said at his office in central Mapusa that the dacoity at Ghanekar house rang an "alarm bell" for the community.
As president of the Ganeshpuri Residents' Association, Sirodkar said, "We have started keeping money at home to save ourselves from assailants if such a situation arises." The RWA includes Ganesh Colony, where the Ghanekars were targeted.
Sirodkar blamed understaffing at Mapusa police station but reserved his sharpest criticism for migrants. "Who carried out the dacoity? People from Bangladesh, police themselves have admitted. Our apparatus for verifying migrants is shambolic. One raid at their premises would recover so many weapons," he alleged.
A new political outfit, the Revolutionary Goans Party, too claims that migrants have been behind crimes in the state.
"Every migrant labourer entering Goa must be registered, and police clearance from their native state should be made compulsory. A strict policy is needed to control and regularise the growing migrant labour business in Goa," party president Manoj Parab had said after submitting a memorandum to Goa Police last month.
Activists pointed out that poor migrants, most of them labourers, become an easy target. "The influx of rich migrants has brought in institutional corruption. Not that it wasn't there before. And the boom of real estate industry and other businesses has been at the expense of native Goans. And poor migrant labourers travel where they find work," Almeida said.
She added, "Just look at what happened in the nightclub fire. Of all the people who died, most of them were migrant workers. All poor fellows, working as kitchen staff," she said.