'Elena could hardly talk English'

'Elena could hardly talk English'
Preetu Nair, TNN

PANAJI: Elena Sukhonova, the Russian teenager whose mutilated body was found on a railway track in Goa on May 8, could not speak English. This places in doubt the claim that she took a taxi ride to Thivim railway station and told the driver she was short of money and wanted to go to Mumbai.

People working in the coastal belt and who had come in contact with Elena say she showed no interest in staying in Goa, couldn’t speak any English and mostly communicated through sign language. The little English she spoke was with great difficulty. “Whenever we wanted to communicate with her, we used the services of a translator. She would try to talk in sign language. The only words in English she could say were single words like ‘water’, ‘hello’, ‘bye’, ‘mineral’, ‘party’, and that too with great difficulty,” said an employee of the hotel where Elena stayed after her arrival in Goa on April 19.

A cop at Calangute police station, where Elena had deposed after she had gone missing on an earlier instance, said, “She could hardly speak in English and we recorded her statement with the help of a translator.”
In his statement to the police, the cab driver said he had dropped Elena at Thivim station at about 3am on May 8 and that she had mentioned that she wanted to go to Mumbai. Police have, however, failed to find any witness who saw her at the station.

Reacting to this, SP (North) Tony Fernandes said, “The inquiry is in progress. We are looking into all aspects of the case.”

Representatives of the tour operator that brought Elena to Goa had got in touch with her family after she went missing. “She was supposed to board a flight to Russia on May 3, but when she went missing we informed her parents in Russia. They too told us she was not responding to calls on her cellphone,” said officials at the agency.

22 May 2009, The Times of India, Goa edition