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Teen's murder 'covered up'
30/03/2008 14:32 - (SA)
Panaji, India - A Indian government-run women's rights body on Sunday accused police in the resort state of Goa of trying to cover up evidence in the controversial killing last month of a British teenager.
Local police initially said Scarlett Keeling, 15, had drowned after her body was found on a popular beach in Goa on February 18, but pressure from her mother and the media forced them to reopen the case.
Police this month arrested a bartender for murder, and an alleged drug dealer for conspiracy to murder, alleging the two gave the girl a cocktail of illegal drugs, before one of them repeatedly raped her and left her for dead.
"It is not an act of two persons. Four to five people are involved in the act," Nirmala Venkatesh, a member of the National Commission for Women, told a news conference in the local capital Panaji.
"She was brutally raped and there is every possibility that her head was dipped in the water," she added, alleging that police had destroyed evidence.
"Police are trying to hide or close the case. We will never allow this to happen."
Police have said that an unconscious Keeling was dumped in shallow water, where she drowned, but a forensics report released a week ago suggested that she was forcibly drowned.
Venkatesh said her report was based on interviews with police, forensic experts and local residents, and that she would submit a final report after a full probe.
Keeling's mother Fiona MacKeown has accused police of shielding top politicians and drug dealers during investigations into her daughter's death.
Keeling's body was Thursday flown to the western city of Mumbai. Her mother plans to take the body home to Britain for a third autopsy, and then burial.
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