Saturday, July 31, 2010

Fiona Mackeown deposes before Goa court

Panaji : Deposing before president of the Goa Children\'s Court, P.V. Sawaikar, here on Friday, Fiona Mackeown, mother of a British teenager who died under mysterious circumstances in Goa two years ago, said: "I believed that my daughter was murdered and the police were trying to hide it."

Ms. Mackeown did not believe the version of investigating police officer of the Anjuna police station, Nerlon Albuquerue, that "her daughter had drowned" because "her daughter was very good in swimming."

She alleged that the police lied about the bruises on the teenager\'s body.

Narrating the sequence of events, right from her arrival in Goa in November 2008 with her boyfriend and her eight children, the victim\'s mother said her daughter occasionally drank beer, but to her knowledge, never consumed drugs. The mother arrived from London on Thursday specially to depose before the Court.

Regarding her daughter\'s unnatural death, Ms. Mackeown also said she first suspected Shanti, an Israeli boy who she and her children met in Anjuna.

But during cross-examination, the victim\'s mother said it was not true to say that she suspected him because he had threatened all of them.

"We met Shanti in Anjuna. He is an Israeli boy. He was harmless and met us a lot. He had followed us and we had to ask him to go away." Ms. Mackeown said she had come to India to show her children the beaches in the country and give them spiritual education. On February 17, she said, she spoke to her daughter from Gokarna in Karnatka on the phone and told the teenager that they would be going back to England to look after her son who had met with an accident.

"My daughter was very happy that we were going home." The teenager was found dead on Anjuna beach on the morning of February 18. Indicating how the police did not do a serious job of collecting evidence in the first place, Ms. Mackeown disclosed how she found some of her daughter\'s sandals, underwear and shorts, which were crucial evidence, halfway between two bars on the beach three days after the tragedy.

Not knowing what to do with them, she called the Foreign Office and on their advice, she handed them over to Mr. Albuquerque. "When I showed him these articles, he looked shocked."

She gave a detailed account during the deposition about how she went knocking doors for justice and writing to different police and other authorities as she suspected foul play. Accusing the police of suppressing information, Ms. Mackeown said she was told that she would get the autopsy report only six months later. She eventually got it after she wrote to some other authority.
News From: http://www.Time2timeNews.com

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