Posted on 03/10/2008 6:20:40 PM PDT by Hatter6
A government official in Goa has accused Indian police of trying to cover up the murder of a British girl. Scarlett Keeling, 15, of Bideford, Devon, was found dead on a beach last month. Police initially said she had died after drinking too much.
Local man Samson D'Souza, 29, has been charged with rape but not with murder.
Goa's Tourism Minister Francisco X Pacheco has stated that Indian police deliberately covered up Miss Keeling's murder.
He told the Reuters news agency: "This is a clear case of murder and it has gone out of proportion because police tried to cover it up."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Who leaves their 16 year old daughter alone in a foreign country?
That’s the problem. They have more money to buy more corruption. I see no end in sight.
The sort of Women who have six children and a ‘boyfriend’.
15, actually. The same kind of parents who buy their daughter a get-drunk-and-whore-it-up trip to Aruba like Mrs. Holloway did.
Exactly right. The city of Goa is one of the biggest tourist attractions for young people - beaches, clubs, etc...
A bit long, but interesting read:
British Families Still Happy to Live Hippie Dream As Goa’s Lustre Dims
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/182430.html
The Indian state has long been a haven. But it is now a drugs and pedophile playground, where police look the other way as the Russian mafia muscle in
For the many Britons who spend the winter season living by the golden beaches of Anjuna, the place remains a paradise, the afternoon calm disturbed only by the occasional bark of stray dogs and the distant strains of trance music.
Even as the police investigate the death of British teenager Scarlett Keeling, whose mother believes she was raped and murdered there last month, travelers describe an idyllic lifestyle on the palm-lined dunes. ‘When I first came here in 1992, I had never felt so immediately at peace,’ said Phil Dane, who moved to Goa from the UK five years ago and now runs a yoga retreat.
But police see the beaches of Anjuna, in north Goa, from a different perspective. Battling against violent drug rings, the growing presence of a Russian mafia and an increasing problem with international pedophilia, police officials express bemusement that so many British parents think Anjuna is a suitable place to relocate with their children for the winter months.
‘Anjuna is notorious,’ said an ex-head of police. ‘It’s the most notorious place in Goa, famous for its rave parties and its long tradition of drug abuse. Most of the shacks and hotels there support the peddling of drugs. It is not a good place to take a family, not at all a respectable place.’
Scarlett’s mother came with six of her children to Goa last November. She described the trip as a Christmas present to the family, saying it would be ‘educational’ for the children who had never been abroad. Scarlett was found dead on 18 February near Anjuna beach.
Police initially recorded death by drowning, but India’s tourism minister described their investigation as an ‘embarrassment’. Amid accusations of a police cover-up, a second autopsy was under way this weekend. Initial reports are that there were more than 50 bruises on her body.
The bar where Scarlett was last seen drinking, hours before her death, has lost most of its customers, but elsewhere life continues as normal. Hippies hang out, tripping on magic mushrooms, and mothers light joints as their children play at their feet in shaded cafes. Locals try to ignore the western women who sunbathe topless, oblivious to India’s conservative social code. Tourists drink whisky in the beach shacks with their breakfast. Only a few hundred yards behind the beach, villagers tend tiny vegetable patches in their yards.
Goa remains a refuge for those looking for an alternative lifestyle, and more and more people from Britain move here for the six-month season. Of the two million people who visited Goa last year, around 200,000 were British. More than 1,000 Britons are staying for the full season.
Rents are cheap, as is childcare, and families that relocate here - often from low income brackets in the UK - can enjoy a luxurious lifestyle centered on the beach. Most turn a blind eye to the sleazier side of Goa, attracted instead by its unrivaled affordability. A good meal can cost just 20p.
Nelly Beetle is a 30-year-old fashion designer from London who has been coming to Goa every six months for four years. The quality of life she has here with her two-year-old daughter, Inca, far outweighs the one she would have in the UK. ‘I pay £800 a year to rent my house, which would barely be a month’s rent in London,’ she says. ‘I put Inca in nursery three mornings a week, which costs £100 for three months - my friends in London pay more than that a week and I have a nanny, which I could never afford in London. My daughter loves India. She has lots of friends that are English girls, and she can swim in the sea and eat fresh papaya every day.’
Reports of Scarlett Keeling’s death, and the suspected drug-related death of another British tourist last week, have not unsettled her. ‘I feel safer here than anywhere in the world and can let my daughter play freely,’ she said.
With so many British people living in the village, the community is close and Claudia Mallinson, who moves to Anjuna every year with her three-year-old daughter and husband, says this is one of the attractions. ‘The social life is great and you can really relax. Unlike the rest of India, Goa is geared towards foreigners, so you can wear a bikini, enjoy western toilets and even eat beef,’ she said. She admitted feeling occasionally uneasy. ‘With the growth in tourism here it is inevitable that more crime will follow. I feel safe anywhere in the rest of India, but in Goa there can be an edge.’
British teacher Beth Spaul runs a nursery school for foreigners in Anjuna - known locally as ‘apartheid’. She conceded that the fluid nature of the tourist village made it hard to know everyone. ‘With so many different people coming here, it’s hard to track who is safe. It is tragic for the Keeling family as they had just moved here,’ she said.
Senior police officers complain that many problems arise because of an unspoken agreement with politicians that excessive policing would harm the tourist industry. ‘The problem in Goa is that the enforcement of the law in regard to foreigners is extremely, extremely lax,’ the former police chief said. ‘There is an atmosphere where no one pays any attention to the law.’
This lack of policing affected everything, he said, from traffic regulations - ‘You see tourists riding around on motorbikes in their bikinis with no helmets on and no one stops them’ - to serious crime: ‘Drug dealers tend to be foreigners, Russians or people from other former Soviet states or Nigerians operating gangs which have only a few Goan members. The authorities do not enforce the laws and regulations, which is very disturbing. It’s asking for trouble. There is a misconception that it would adversely impact the tourist industry,’ he said.
In the past decade the number of Russians in Goa has increased from under 400 in 1997 to an estimated 35,000 this year and locals talk openly of an organized Russian mafia controlling crime and taking over beaches. ‘Russians bring over girls who are working as prostitutes,’ said an estate agent in Panjim, Goa’s capital. ‘They buy up any land they can with suitcases full of dollars, cordoning off beaches for themselves and running drugs and arms deals through bogus businesses.’
There is suspicion that police officers do not always investigate serious crimes adequately, so as not to damage Goa’s reputation as an idyllic holiday resort. Amanda Bennett has accused the police of a cover-up over the death of her brother Stephen, from Cheltenham, who was found hanging from a mango tree after fleeing the beaches of Goa in December 2006. The circumstances up to his death remain a mystery.
Despite posters on the beach warning of the presence of pedophiles, charities working to confront the problem complain that the police often prefer not to pursue cases. ‘We know of dozens of cases of tourist pedophilia in Goa, but despite overwhelming evidence of abuse of minors, it is so easy for foreign pedophiles to bribe their way out of trouble,’ said Nishta Desai, a sociologist who runs the non-governmental organization Child Rights in Goa.
Away from the beaches of Goa, the death of Scarlett Keeling is particularly unwelcome for the Indian government, which was recently forced to call a high-level government meeting to discuss the safety of foreign visitors following a spate of crimes against female tourists.
The cases prompted a number of headlines. ‘Incredibly Unsafe India’ warned the Hindustan Times, a wry reference to the country’s tourism slogan ‘Incredible India’. The government has circulated a new list of safety tips to foreign embassies, warning female travelers to ‘avoid developing familiarity with strangers’, never to accept lifts from unknown men and not to open hotel rooms without using the safety latch.
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