Police in the popular Indian resort state of Goa on Sunday launched a murder investigation after the partially naked body of a British teenager was found last month on a beach. The announcement came after doctors conducted a fresh autopsy and concluded 15-year-old Scarlette Keeling was murdered, and did not drown as local police had initially insisted. “We are investigating it as a murder case,” senior Goa state police official Kishan Kumar told reporters Sunday, the morning after a panel of three doctors conducted a six-hour examination of the body. “There will be detentions now,” he added, without providing details, though sources say the owner of a cafe on popular Anjuna beach where Keeling was last seen alive is likely to be questioned. But Kumar denied allegations by Fiona MacKeown, Keeling's mother, that police had initially tried to hush-up the murder. “Police never failed in their duty. They were right on the track,” said Kumar. MacKeown pointed to the large numbers of bruises on her daughter's body to bolster her call for a second examination after an earlier autopsy concluded the girl drowned in the choppy Arabian Sea. The first autopsy found only five bruises on Keeling's body, but Saturday's examination discovered as many as 50, with at least half of them believed to have been inflicted before she died. MacKeown's lawyer also said the family suspects Keeling may have been sexually assaulted. __
