Hinting that she would request the CBI to go in for an appeal against the acquittal of her 15-year-old daughter’s alleged assaulters, Fiona Mackeown has said, that instead of getting justice for Scarlett Keeling, it felt that the judges put her on trial.
“I don’t understand how they (CBI) could fail, when they are the best that India have. How some of the witnesses weren’t questioned. I don’t know what else. At the end of the day my daughter was murdered in Goa and I felt like the judges put me on trial,” she told The Pioneer.
“She is listing all these things about me, that it was my job to do this, it was my job to do that. I am a stranger in a foreign country and my daughter was murdered. How can it my responsibility to do everything. And she brought up the fact that I was monitoring the case very closely. Why wouldn’t IIJ I wanted to know why my daughter died, I wanted to know every single detail of the case, because I did not trust the police. The police have been lying from the beginning,” Mackeown said, adding that she finds it “ludicrous” that these points have been brought up.
Mackeown also said that she feels “very, very sad that the murderers are walking free and apparently no one killed my daughter”.
The half-naked body of Scarlett, one of the eight children of Mackeown who hails from Devon in England, was found dead at Anjuna beach, a beach in North Goa popular with foreign tourists, in February 2008.
The police initially dismissed the case as a suicide with an initial autopsy suggesting the same. However, a sustained campaign for justice by Mackeown, forced the police to re-investigate the case. The second probe revealed 52 injury marks on her body and examination of her viscera discovered traces of cocaine and other drugs, which Fiona claimed were administered to her by her assailants.