Mother's doubt over murder inquiry
- 00:01:34
- ITN
Mother's doubt over murder inquiry
The mother of a British teenager raped and murdered in Goa has said she believes police could have the wrong man in custody.Indian police initially believed 15-year-old Scarlett Keeling accidentally drowned while on holiday in the Indian beach resort, but later launched a murder investigation after her mother, Fiona MacKeown, was convinced of foul play.The results of a second post-mortem showed Scarlett, from Bideford, Devon, was attacked and also did not have enough water in her lungs to have drowned.According to some reports, the teenager was drinking in a bar in the resort of Anjuna on February 18 in the company of three men - one of whom was identified as Samson D'Souza and the other a foreigner known locally as Masala Mike.Witnesses came forward alleging they saw D'Souza rape Scarlett on the beach. The 28-year-old appeared in court in Mapusa. He has not been charged with any offence but was remanded in custody.Goa police official inspector Kishan Kumar said earlier: "We have sufficient evidence to show this man (D'Souza) was having sex with the girl in the early hours of February 18. We have established that he was raping her."The police official added that Indian officers are now working on a murder investigation. "This part of the investigation is still going on," he said. Police have reportedly now asked the man known as Masala Mike to come forward for questioning.However, Ms MacKeown has questioned whether police have got the correct suspect in custody. She has spent the weeks since her daughter's death demanding an investigation and claiming that her daughter, who had 50 marks on her body, was murdered.Ms MacKeown managed to find her daughter's clothing on the beach and had also taken witness statements in an attempt to find out what happened.She said: "I am not confident that they have got the right person, I think that they are just making a public show, to be honest. We have had many reports that they have done this before with other cases for a start-off."I just think they are going to continue to try to cover themselves up - their mistakes."She said a letter has been sent to the Chief Minister of Goa explaining that the family is unhappy with how the case is being dealt with and wants the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India's investigation agency, to come in and take over.She added: "Only then will I be satisfied that somebody from outside the area is dealing with this case and I would want them to deal with the police as well, not just the people that have done this to Scarlett."The police really need dealing with as well because this is an ongoing thing, it has happened before many times and if they had dealt with it in the past, Scarlett may still be alive today."Scarlett was on a six-month holiday in India with her mother, her mother's boyfriend, and six other children. The rest of the family were travelling in a nearby state and the teenager had stayed with a tour guide in Anjuna when she was last seen at a bar in the popular resort.Ms MacKeown said she would now fly her daughter's body home for a funeral and then return to Goa to keep pressuring the police in their investigation.Goa is extremely popular with Western tourists but in the last few years there have been problems with tourists dying from drug overdoses and women especially being attacked and sexually assaulted.According to the Times Of India, 126 foreigners have died in Goa over the last two years and in January this year a 30-year-old British woman was raped.© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.
ITN | March 10, 2008
