‘Night before death Scarlett was singing, talking about stars’

PANAJI - Hours before Scarlett Keeling was sexually assaulted and murdered at Anjuna beach two years ago, the 15-year-old was singing, talking about the stars and wanted to hear music, a key witness told a court in Goa.

The statement of a key prosecution witness, Murli Sagar, recorded July 23, sourced by IANS from the Goa Children’s Court (GCC) also says that Scarlett was last seen in the company of Samson D’Souza, a beach shack waiter and that the teenager was “comfortable with him”.

Murli Sagar worked as a waiter at the Lui Café shack located at Anjuna beach, which Scarlett had last frequented before she was found dead.

“Once she reached the sand, she followed men, sat down and started talking about the stars and wanted music,” Sagar said in his statement, which is a crucial eyewitness account of how Scarlett spent her last few hours, previously unreported in the media.

Narrating the chemistry between Scarlett and Samson, Murli said: “I saw that Samson had sat down with Scarlett and it appeared that she was comfortable with him. I saw that she folded her legs and went down with him. At that time she was relaxed and was singing.”

Murli also told the GCC that Samson had promised to drop her home that night.

Murli said that before he left Lui shack, he spent the last few minutes looking for one of Scarlett’s missing slippers, on Samson’s request.

“As I was leaving on the scooter, Samson told me that she (Scarlett) had lost her slipper and requested me to find it. I tried, but could not find it,” Murli said.

The sexual assault, subsequent death of Scarlett and her mother Fiona Mackeown’s quest for justice in the face of an allegedly compromised police investigation, had grabbed headlines the world over.

The Scarlett episode also exposed the dark underbelly of beach tourism in coastal Goa, which is very often interlinked with the drug trade.

Fiona, who has in the past claimed that the drug mafia in Goa was responsible for her daughter’s death and the subsequent cover up by the police, will be arriving in India Thursday in order to depose before the GCC as part of her daughter’s culpable homicide trial scheduled Friday.

Two beach shack workers, Samson D’souza and Placido Carvalho, have already been arrested and booked for culpable homicide and sexual assault in connection with the case.