Goa suspect hidden from press

By Karishma Vaswani
BBC News, Goa

Scarlett Barcroft was on holiday with her family

The Indian police did their best to make sure the press did not catch a glimpse of Samson D'Souza.

The 29-year-old appeared in a court in Goa, India, charged with raping British teenager Scarlett Keeling.

Her body was found on 18 February on a beach in the popular resort.

Mr D'Souza, who is slim and tall, was wearing a black hood as he arrived for his court appearance of between 40 minutes and an hour.

The police then used a decoy vehicle to throw the press off the scent, and whisked the suspect away in a car from the back entrance of the courts.

Initially the police said Scarlett had drowned after drinking too much, but then decided to investigate further after her mother, Fiona MacKeown, pushed local authorities to continue their inquiries.

The second round of autopsy results on Scarlett's body showed in fact there were 50 bruises on the 15-year-old's body, and the doctors who examined her said that a murder investigation should be carried out.

Evidence hunt

There is some anger here among local people towards the foreign press, who they say are unfairly portraying Goa in a negative light.

Mr D'Souza, a local barman at a popular pub in Goa, will now be in police custody for the next 14 days, where he will face questioning over Scarlett's murder.

The superintendent of Goa's Police, Jorge Bosco, told the BBC that Mr D'Souza has been apprehended on the rape charge, but they have yet to find sufficient evidence to support the murder charge.

In the police charge sheet accessed by the BBC, Mr D'Souza confesses to spending the night of 17 February with Scarlett. He said that he left her at 0500 - but when he left her she was still alive.

The following day her body was found not too far from Mr D'Souza's pub. According to the police report, another witness, a foreign tourist named Masala Mike, saw Mr D'Souza's orange sandals near Scarlett's body.

Mr D'Souza was detained by police after witnesses said they saw him with Scarlett shortly before her body was found at the Anjuna resort.

'Cover up'

But Mrs MacKeown, Scarlett's mother, told the BBC she's not convinced that Mr D'Souza is the sole culprit in her daughter's death.

She said: "I'm not confident that they've got the right person, I think they're [the police] just making a public show to be honest.

"We've had many reports that they've done this before with other cases for a start off and I just think they're going to continue to try and cover themselves up and their mistakes."

Meanwhile, in an unusual twist to this murder-mystery, Goa's tourism minister Francisco X Pacheco has stated that Indian police deliberately covered up Scarlett's murder.

Many local newspapers in India say the reason officials tried to initially play down news of Scarlett's death was because they didn't want to hurt the state's booming tourism industry.

It's estimated that out of the 2.5m foreign tourists who visit Goa every year, more than half are British.