Partially overturning a 2016 trial court order, the Bombay High Court in Goa yesterday convicted Samson D’Souza and acquitted Placido Carvalho in connection with a case involving the sexual assault and death of 15-year-old British teenager Scarlett Keeling at Anjuna beach in 2008.
The teenager from Bideford in Devon was on a six-month “trip of a lifetime” to India with her family when she died.
Police in Goa initially concluded her death was accidental but, after a campaign by her family, a second post-mortem examination in March 2008 revealed she had been drugged and raped before drowning in seawater.
The teenager and her family had spent two months at the Goan resort before travelling down the coast to Karnataka – but Scarlett was allowed to return to attend a Valentine’s Day beach party.
She was left in the care of 25-year-old tour guide Julio Lobo, Scarlett’s mother Fiona MacKeown told media outlets. Two days after Scarlett’s body was discovered, her mother found her sandals, pants and shorts close to the beach.
Speaking to reporters after the pronouncement of the order, Ejaz Khan, counsel for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), said: “Samson has been convicted, Carvalho is acquitted. The matter would be heard tomorrow for quantum of punishment.”
The CBI had challenged the acquittal of the two beach-shack workers, Samson D’Souza and Placido Carvalho, who were accused of sexually assaulting Scarlett and leaving her to die on Anjuna beach in 2008.
D’Souza and Carvalho had been charged under Indian Penal Code sections 304 (II) (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), 354 (assault or use of criminal force on a woman with an intent to outrage her modesty) and 328 (administering stupefying drug with an intent to cause hurt).
Vikram Varma, lawyer of Scarlett’s mother Fiona Mackeown who was present during the hearing, said that justice had been done especially with the court ordering the conviction of Samson, after finding him guilty on all listed counts.
“They assaulted her and killed her. That conduct brings them under the purview of the Goa Children’s Act. And accused number one Samson D’Souza was found guilty on all counts. This is based on the same evidence which has been gathered on trial over 10 years,” Varma said, adding that the court acquitted Carvalho because of lack of evidence.
The dragging on of the trial in the two courts and the earlier acquittals had weighed heavy on Mackeown’s heart, Varma said.
“The last memory I have of her is of her squealing and being excited because I said yes,” MacKeown said. “I have to live with that every day that I let her go.”
“There was no investigation,” she said at the time.
Along with the delays in court, MacKeown had to wait four-and-a-half years to bury her daughter. She was finally laid to rest in June 2012, in a garden at the family’s home in Devon.