Team Herald
PANJIM: Fiona MacKeown, mother of British teenager Scarlett Keeling, on Thursday approached Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking his intervention in the death of her daughter seeking justice claiming it to be murder and not drowning.
Last week the Goa Children’s Court had acquitted two locals who were charged by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for drugging, sexually abusing and leaving Scarlett to die on Anjuna beach in 2008.
In her petition MacKeown has prayed that the persons responsible for the murder of her daughter be prosecuted after they have been identified. She has also stated that the people who have destroyed evidence related to the crime be prosecuted.
“The local fishermen informed me she was murdered by a drug mafia in Goa, but as this drug mafia had strong connections with the local police and the politicians, it would be pointless for me to approach the criminal justice system,” MacKeown said in the petition.
Her lawyer Vikram Varma said that evidence had been destroyed within 20 days of the death before Anjuna Police registered the case. He said witnesses have confirmed to CBI that a large quantity of cocaine was stored and sold at the Louis shack where Sacrlett was last seen.
“Why has CBI not taken any action on the people who were selling and storing the drugs? The narcotics angle which was openly revealed in the course of investigation of CBI was not considered and properly probed,” Varma said.
He said that if CBI did not have the mandate to probe the NDPS angle then they should have informed the appropriate authority to initiate action. It was not done by the investigating agency, he added. “Where there is political power to protect the drug lobby they will limit the
mandate of the investigation,” Varma said.
He alleged that CBI was given a mandate to only probe the murder angle purely because of the political interference.
MacKeown, in her petition to the PMO, said that Nerlon Albuquerque, then Police Sub Inspector of Anjuna Police Station, tried his best to shield the criminals and also tried to convince her with lies that her daughter was a victim of accidental drowning.
