In a little under a decade, yet another woman – a foreigner – lay killed – not far from the shores of the sea. The death of Danielle McLaughlin, a lively 28-year-old from the small town on Buncarna in Donegal county brings back haunting images of the death of Scarlett Keeling on the waters of the Arabian sea in Anjuna, in the extreme other end, from where Danielle McLaughlin was killed. Scarelett Keeling would also have been 28, Danielle’s age, if she was with us today.
The circumstances in which she was killed, the events which led up to it, had an uncanny parallel, with the events of February 2008, which led to the death of Scarlett Keeling. The cocktail of headiness, in the haze of music and alcohol, completely in sync with the spirit of joie de vivre that goes with a happy tourist destination, continued from Canacona to Agonda to Palolem across a nightclubs and bars. And as it happened with Scarlett, she had local “friends” for company. And in Danielle’s case, she was partying with folks who turned out to be her likely rapists and killers. And in Scarlett’s case, her mother has now petitioned the Prime Minister of the country and the state of Goa is moving the High Court against the decision of the trail court of acquitting the two local boys who were accused of killing her.
There are two extremely disconcerting elements here. These kind of brutal crimes, which become visible and escalated with international focus and media attention, are not investigated with even the minimum degree of professionalism and finesse, witha lack of speed and reflexes on the part of the investigators in seizing clues and sanitising the crime spot. Secondly, – and while that may not be the case in this the killing of Denielle McLaughlin – there are traces or more of a nexus between the local police and the local accused, primarily because of very close acquaintances struck between people and various arms of government in a small place like Goa. Scarlett’s mother’s uphill battle to secure justice for her daughter has been peppered with anguished outcries over how evidence was destroyed and tampered with. She has very directly mentioned the name of a very high ranking politician in Goa and his son, for having interfered in the investigations of her daughter death which she continues to be convinced, was a cold blooded murder.
The chain of deaths, that have gone on to make headlines around the world especially in Europe, include that of Denyse Sweeney, the chirpy young woman in her mid thirties who loved Goa to the point of almost having decided to move here. She was discovered in what was called a “distressed state” outside a bar in Anjuna after which she died in hospital. The post-mortem report “found” that she died of drug overdose, but tests , later carried out discovered that there were no drugs in her system but there were twenty unexplained injury marks.
And there was Finnish national Felix Dahl, whose mysterious death in Canacona, South Goa, right where Danielle McLaughlin died two days ago, was passed off simply as an unnatural death. But Finnish police called the death a “crime and a homicide”, since the post-mortem clearly states that there were five wounds on the back of Dahl’s head is due to a hard and blunt object. He died on the night of January 28-29, 2015. Felix Valdemar Dahl, was just 22.
One striking trail of sadness that runs through each of the three cases, is that the mothers of two and the sister of one women who refused to give up, followed the investigations and did all they could to see that attention from these cases did not fall off the radar and the cases themselves made some progress, even by the tardy standards of investigation displayed by the local police. Maureen Sweeny, the sister of Denyse, Minna Pirhonen, the mother of Felix Dhal, a lecturer at the University of Helsinki’s and of course Fionna McKeown, Scarlett’s mother, and literally the face of resistance, not just for her daughter but for all others, have fought long lonely battles.
The narrative that runs through these cases is very sinister. And it’s not the narrative associated generally with hedonistic tourists who get drunk or over dose and harm themselves in Goa. Investigations into all these cases point to some form of pre meditated violence inflicted on these victims by perpetrators. And it is this that deeply upsets the fabric of peace and safety on which Goa’s tourism dream is woven. This fabric used to have occasional tears but these deaths have ruptured it to a point where frequent visitors no longer see a sense of calm but of lurking harm. And it is this perception shift which could be a telling blow to a land where welcoming visitors is a fact of life.
