Doctor alleges cover-up in Scarlett death case

Doctor alleges cover-up in Scarlett death case
Hunt On For British Witness; Mother Writes To PM
Preetu Nair | TNN

Panaji: The Goa police has issued a lookout notice for British tourist Michael Manyon aka Masala Mike, a key witness in British teenager Scarlett Keeling’s alleged rape and murder. The girl’s mother, Fiona MacKeown, has also written a letter to PM Manmohan Singh, requesting him to take adequate steps to identify and prosecute the drug mafia in Goa.
There’s also trouble for Goa police, which is facing the charge of a cover-up in the probe into Scarlett’s death, with a senior doctor who conducted the first autopsy caught on hidden camera by a TV channel as saying that the cops ignored his observation that the incident could have been a case of homicide. The cops declared Scarlett’s death a murder only after the second autopsy forced by the teen’s mother. The face-saver that the Goa police have is that the doctor gave a verbal opinion and not a written one, which is against medical rules. A lot now hinges on whether Goa police are able to track down Masala Mike.
Police sources said they believed that Masala had disappeared because the main accused in the case, Samson D’- Souza, had threatened him. Samson was arrested after another witness, Placido Carvalho alias Shanu Boy, informed cops that he had seen a half-naked Samson on top of the minor girl at the parking lot behind Lui’s Cafe on February 18. The police are also looking for one Murali who according to Shanu Boy in his anticipatory bail application had left Lui Cafe with Scarlett, while Samson and Masala were still there.
‘‘We want to examine Masala first as he has claimed to know many things,’’ said IGP Kishen Kumar. He said the police were in touch with the British high commission in New Delhi and that they had informed him that Masala had contacted them and was very much in the country.
But there’s a twist in the tale. According to the affidavit filed by the police, there were eye-witnesses who had also seen Samson and Masala together with Scarlett a few hours before her death. The affidavit states that the owner of Lui Cafe, Lui, saw Scarlett with Samson and Masala near the bar. This is substantiated by another witness Chandru Chawan. It is also learnt that Samson, on learning that Scarlett was dead, panicked, and there was an argument between him and Masala, during which Masala accused Samson of having done something to the girl. This was overheard by Lui and Chandru.
British eyewitness’s testimony crucial
The testimony of the British eyewitness — who saw Scarlett at the parking lot behind Lui’s shack with a barman, suspected to be Samson D’- Souza, ‘‘on top of her’’ shortly before she was found murdered — could prove crucial. His identity isn’t known, but there are unconfirmed reports that Masala Mike and the tourist who gave graphic details to the correspondent of a London newspaper, are one and the same.
According to the newspaper story, the witness approached the British high commission for help but was told that it couldn’t intervene in a judicial matter; instead, he was given contact details of two lawyers.
According to the report in a London newspaper, the British eyewitness said he saw the teenager for the first time when she fell on the beach in front of Lui’s shack at around 3 am on February 18. She was helped in, where she told the staff that she had no money to pay for a taxi to go home.
The witness says Scarlett told him that she had had three drops of LSD, two Ecstasy pills and cocaine. After talking to him and others in the shack, the witness says she disappeared for around an hour; she went behind the shack where she probably sniffed more cocaine.
Around 4.30 am, one of the men, who the British witness thought worked at the bar, offered Scarlett a lift. She went out with him but he noted another barman (now allegedly Samson) leave as well.
When the Brit stepped out, he saw the man who had offered Scarlett a lift drive away but, he says he saw in the beam of the bike’s headlight a man (allegedly Samson) on top of her. He got on to his own scooter and shouted at the barman but didn’t intervene, because he didn’t hear Scarlett protest. He did not inform cops as he didn’t suspect that she was going to be killed. TNN
Times View
The manner in which the authorities in Goa are dealing with the Scarlett Keeling murder case is shameful. Instead of accepting the failure of the state to follow up the rape and murder of a minor girl, the chief minister and senior police officers seem keen to paint the victim and her family as wayward, and hence somehow inviting the heinous crime upon the girl. In short, the attempt is to depict the victim/s as villains. The CM has said Scarlett’s mother Fiona should have taken care of her child, while the police are even suggesting they could throw the law book at Fiona for leaving her daughter alone in Goa. These tactics should not be allowed to cloud the main issue — a girl was raped and murdered and precious little has been done to bring the culprit to book. In fact, the initial effort was to cover up the crime and pass off the murder as a case of drowning. This kind of dodginess is not expected from a government. It should get on with the job of catching the murderer.

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Skin=TOI&Daily=CAP&Enter=true&GZ=T