As Fiona Mackeown, mother of Scarlett Keeling, the 15-year-old British teenager murdered on Goa’s beach on February 18, demands a high-level inquiry, Amanda Merritt, whose brother died there, tells why she’s convinced he was killed too. In Timesonline, UK:
After a year of trying to piece together what had happened to her brother, Merritt has recently succeeded in persuading the Indian police to reinvestigate his death. At first – like Scarlett – he was dismissed as just another hedonistic tourist. But Merritt believes he was targeted and killed by members of Goa’s criminal underworld.
Stephen, who had travelled alone in Asia several times as part of a masters degree in Chinese theatre studies, had been taking a December holiday alone in Goa and intended to be away for two weeks. He planned to spend Christmas with his two daughters and had already wrapped their presents.
On December 12 his body was found hanging from a tree, a woman’s sari around his neck, in a village 200 miles from Goa.
Drug dealers blamed for rising death toll in India’s hippy paradise
Since the 1960s, when the first hippies arrived with their tie-dye and LSD, Goa has been renowned for its pristine beaches, cosmopolitan atmosphere and plentiful supply of narcotics.
But the suspected rape and murder of Scarlett Keeling, a 15-year-old British girl found dead last month on the famous Anjuna beach, has now shattered the Indian state’s reputation as a “hippy paradise”, free of worldly evils.
Goan officials and many long term foreign residents were quick to blame Fiona MacKeown, Scarlett’s mother, for leaving her alone in Anjuna. They insist that the place is no more dangerous than other popular beach resorts.
Briton ‘witnessed sex attack on Scarlett Keeling’
A British man has told The Times that he saw an Indian barman apparently sexually assaulting Scarlett Keeling less than two hours before the 15-year-old British girl’s half-naked body was found on a beach in Goa.
The witness, who asked not to be identified, said that the attack took place after Scarlett left Lui’s bar on Anjuna Beach high on a cocktail of LSD, Ecstasy and cocaine at 5am on February 18.
More in timesonline, UK:
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This incident has far reaching implications and if you have no objection here is my link.
http://justlearningman.wordpress.com/2008/03/13/pragmatic-parent-pompous-pratt-or-prophetic-purifier/