Fiona MacKeown says she feels let down by India's judicial system, eight years after her daughter's body was found on a Goa beach.
A mother says she is "devastated" and "reeling" after two men were cleared over her daughter's death in Goa.
A judge in the popular Indian resort state acquitted Samson D'Souza and Placido Carvalho of the rape and culpable homicide of British schoolgirl Scarlett Keeling eight years ago.
The pair smiled as the not guilty verdict was announced by Judge Vandana Tendulkar in a packed courtroom.
D'Souza told reporters: "I am happy with the verdict. Justice has prevailed."
Scarlett's mother, Fiona MacKeown, said she was "disappointed" and planned to fight to overturn the ruling in a higher court.
She went on: "I am reeling. It's been eight years of agony. I feel devastated and will definitely be challenging the verdict.
"We had been waiting all this time and it's just rubbish. India's whole judicial system has totally let me down.
"Somebody murdered my daughter in this country and somebody must be held accountable."
The 15-year-old's bruised and half-naked body was discovered in shallow water on Anjuna beach in February 2008.
She suffered 50 separate injuries, Goa Children's Court heard.
A post-mortem examination showed there was ecstasy, cocaine and LSD inside her body when she was found.
D'Souza and Carvalho were alleged to have plied her with drugs, raped her and left her unconscious on the beach where she subsequently drowned.
They denied the charges, claiming Scarlett died accidentally after deciding to take drugs herself.
Police had initially dismissed the teenager's death as an accident.
But they opened a murder probe after Ms MacKeown pushed for a second post-mortem examination which proved the youngster, from Bideford in north Devon, had been drugged and raped.
Ms MacKeown told Sky News the police case was "dragged out so long" and she claimed officers had lied about the "whole incident to start with".
And she believed they "tried to rubbish Scarlett and me".
She said: "It's been a parent's worst nightmare. It's bad enough to lose a child to murder without it being dragged out so long."
Before her death, Scarlett had been at a Valentine's Day party while the rest of her family had gone travelling to the neighbouring state of Karnataka.
Ms MacKeown admitted she was "very naive" and "the decision I made to let her go back to Anjuna will be a decision I regret for the rest of my life".
No comments:
Post a Comment