Goa: Scarlett's killers roaming free for 6 years, says mother

Panaji: Fiona Mackeown, the mother of slain British teenager Scarlett Keeling, has told Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar that it has been six years since her daughter was sexually assaulted and left to die on a Goa beach but her killers are roaming scot-free. [caption id=“attachment_1383475” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Scarlett Keeling. Reuters[/caption] Praising Parrikar for his “honesty”, Mackeown said in a letter to him that there was no sense of closure for her. “I was informed that the Goa government had put up the case in a fast track court and there was a possibility for me to get some justice within months,” Mackeown said in the letter dated 6 February. “The previous Goa government tried its best to hush up the matter but due to a strong intervention by the Indian media and your then stand as leader of opposition, the matter was handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation, which I was informed was the finest investigation agency of India,” she said. Mackeown said her daughter’s killers were “politically connected and protected by powerful people in the previous government”. On 18 February, 2008, the 15-year-old Scarlett was sexually assaulted and found dead on Anjuna beach allegedly by two beach shack hands Samson D’Souza and Placido Carvalho. While police initially dismissed the case as suicide, Mackeown’s intervention and an international campaign forced the authorities to relook the case only to discover that the teenager was drugged, sexually assaulted and left to die on the beach by the duo. In her deposition in court, Mackeown had even named then home minister Ravi Naik and his son Roy as those responsible for shielding her daughter’s killers and running a narcotics protection racket in coastal Goa. Mackeown said she now wants justice from Parrikar, and that she was no different from any Indian mother. “Every fibre of my being wants to punish those who killed my daughter but I do not have the strength or the means to identify and punish them,” she said. Mackeown said the killers have “walked free for the last six years, while my daughter lies buried and as her mother I stand helpless in the hands of an administration for which justice has clearly taken a back seat”. Mackeown also asked the chief minister to confirm if he could provide expeditious justice for her daughter and list the steps he would take to ensure the same. IANS