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Panaji: Blowing to bits the police version on Scarlett Keeling’s death, forensic experts have found a possibility of the British teenager being murdered rather than being left to die after being drugged and raped.
The new autopsy showed the 15-year-old girl was raped and then held under water for five to ten minutes. The report said her killers had covered her nostrils and mouth.
The cocktail of alcohol and drugs in her body was "not enough to cause coma and death," it said.
Goa police had said Placido Carvalho, an alleged drug dealer, had drugged her while bartender Samson D’ Souza raped her twice and left her to die in the shallow water. The two have been already arrested.
The report also mentions that the bruises and abrasions on the body are suggestive of signs and struggles. Police had insisted those were signs of the sexual assault on her, which is contradicted in the report submitted on Saturday.
Scarlett's mother, Fiona MacKeown said, "I looked at her body and the bruising on her head, face and shoulder is consistent with this. She struggled, she kicked, she tried to stay alive."
"I'm just horrified that the police are still covering up my daughter's death. Who are they covering for? It must be someone very important."
The Keeling family's lawyer, Vikram Varma, who is expecting to see a copy of the report on Sunday, confirmed that he understood the dossier gave Scarlett's cause of death as drowning by asphyxiation.
"That would make it forced homicide, which is murder," Varma said. "It is what we've been saying all along and what the police have been trying to cover up."
The investigating authorities had said that since Scarlett was unconscious she could not get up from the water and water went into her nose drowning her on the spot.
The first autopsy said five bruises were noticed on her body while the second autopsy mentioned 50 bruises of which 22 ante mortem, which had raised the suspicion on the circumstances that led to her death.
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