Indian policeman stripped of powers over murder case: official

Posted 03 11 2008 10:45AM

PANAJI, India (AFP) - A policeman in India's tourist hotspot of Goa has been stripped of his authority over his role in investigations into the murder of a British teenager, an official said.

The mother of murdered Scarlett Keeling has said Goa police initially tried to hush up the matter by saying the teenager died of drowning.

"We are examining the allegations and the first step we took was to strip him of his authority," Goa inspector general of police Kishan Kumar said.

"All his authorities are withdrawn and he is without any charge now," Kumar added, explaining that action was taken because of allegations that the official had tried to cover up information.

Local police on Sunday charged an Indian bartender with raping the 15-year-old three weeks after she was found dead on a beach.

The girl's mother, Fiona MacKeown, on Monday renewed calls for a proper inquiry to catch her killers, saying she had no faith in local police.

"The police here have a reputation for just arresting someone so it looks like they've done something," the distraught 43-year-old told AFP.

"They're charging him with statutory rape so the headlines can read 'We've got the guy who raped Scarlett Keeling.' It's been a farce from the beginning."

MacKeown said she was not convinced police had got the right man in 29-year-old Samson D'Souza, one of three people being interrogated in connection with the murder.

D'Souza worked at Lui cafe on the popular Anjuna beach, where Keeling was last seen alive in the early hours of February 18 after partying with a Spanish girlfriend.

An unidentified witness told police that D'Souza was seen in "a compromising position" with Keeling hours before her bruised, partially nude body was discovered just a few metres (yards) away from the cafe.

It was unclear whether the police witness was the British man who told a London daily that he saw the sexual assault on Keeling.

The British man, who has fled Goa, told The Times he saw a barman from Lui's "lying on top" of Keeling as he left the cafe shortly before dawn on February 18.

"I'm trying to do the right thing. I want to cooperate," he told Monday's newspaper. "But I feel that I am in great danger."

The man also said Keeling told him she had taken three drops of LSD, two Ecstasy pills and cocaine.

The latest developments came after a fresh autopsy conducted at MacKeown's insistence concluded that Keeling was murdered.

The first autopsy found only five bruises on Keeling's body, but Saturday's examination discovered as many as 50, with at least half of them believed to have been inflicted before she died.

MacKeown, who had left her daughter in Goa to go off on a trip to neighbouring Karnataka state, is now calling for the federal Central Bureau of Investigation -- India's leading crime agency -- to take over the case.

She made the plea in a letter to Goa chief minister Digambar Kamat that was shown to AFP on Monday.

The case has raised concerns that tropical Goa is unsafe for foreign tourists, particularly women.

"I am getting so many calls from places like Germany, UK and other places," Goa tourism minister Francisco Xavier Pacheco told reporters Monday. "They are apprehensive about coming to Goa."

Tourism accounts for about 15 percent, or 465 million dollars, of the state's three-billion-dollar economy.

Goa receives about 400,000 foreign tourists each year, 60 percent of them British. Large numbers of Russians also visit.

MacKeown and her boyfriend brought her eldest daughter and six younger children from their home in Devon in southwest England to Goa in November.