Goa Blog

Indian police have charged two men in connection with the death of a British teenager found dead on a beach in the coastal state of Goa last month, a top police official told CNN Thursday.

Both men have been charged with drugging, raping, and killing Scarlett Keeling, 15, who was found dead on February 18, said Inspector General Kishan Kumar of the Goa Police.

Police arrested Placido Carvalho, who is in his 30s, on Wednesday night.

Scarlett Keeling was left with the family of a friend while her own family travelled to another part of India.

Kumar said Carvalho was suspected of drugging Scarlett, after which the other, previously-arrested suspect, Samson D’Souza, 29, raped her.

“Both of these persons have been charged with the offense of rape, murder, and drugging the girl,” Kumar said.

Fiona MacKeown believes that police plans to question her over child negligence are a “diversion.”

Scarlett was found dead on Goa’s Anjuna Beach on February 18.

Police initially said she drowned after drinking too much, but her mother pressed for a second autopsy after witnesses told her Scarlett’s body was partially clothed and covered in bruises.

Police then reclassified the case as a rape and murder.

The mother, Fiona MacKeown, said she also went to the beach where the body was found and collected evidence including Scarlett’s underwear and other articles of clothing.

MacKeown has questioned why police missed the evidence. She has alleged a corrupt police investigation in which authorities have tried to cover up evidence to protect the local drug trade.

Police at first said Scarlett Keeling had drowned but later opened a murder investigation.

Scarlett had been in Goa on an extended vacation with her family.

When family members traveled to an adjoining Indian state, Scarlett stayed behind, living with a male friend and his aunts.

MacKeown said she knew the man and his family well and that they treated Scarlett like part of the family, though she said Scarlett and the man eventually started a sexual relationship.

Young travelers party on a beach in Goa where several women have been attacked and sexually assaulted.

Police had planned to question MacKeown about negligence for leaving her daughter behind, MacKeown said this week, but Kumar said Thursday police no longer needed to speak with her.

“We’d like to talk to her whenever,” Kumar said. “(But) so far as we are concerned, we don’t have any plan to do that.”

MacKeown sent a letter to the Indian prime minister Wednesday alleging there is a “strong drug mafia on the coast of Anjuna” which local police are protecting.

“I have no faith in the leadership of the Goa Police,” she wrote. “I am certain that they would try their best to implicate somebody, treat the crime in isolation while ignoring the larger and more important matter of this criminal nexus.”
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The case has thrown the spotlight on Goa, popular for its white sandy beaches and electronic trance music scene.

“My daughter has been murdered and nothing would bring her back to life, but your timely intervention now, would ensure, that the tourists coming here, as well as the people of Goa retain their faith in the state and administration,” MacKeown wrote.”

Courtesy: CNN