Since the 1960s, when the first hippies arrived with their tie-dye and LSD, Goa has been renowned for its pristine beaches, cosmopolitan atmosphere and plentiful supply of narcotics.

But the suspected rape and murder of Scarlett Keeling, a 15-year-old British girl found dead last month on the famous Anjuna beach, has now shattered the Indian state’s reputation as a “hippy paradise”, free of worldly evils.

Goan officials and many long term foreign residents were quick to blame Fiona MacKeown, Scarlett’s mother, for leaving her alone in Anjuna. They insist that the place is no more dangerous than other popular beach resorts.

Statistics from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office show that 40 British citizens died in Goa last year and ten have died so far this year, but 60 per cent of those were from natural causes. They include many British pensioners who have retired to Goa in recent years.

The same statistics also show that 847,000 British citizens visited India in the year up to March 2006 and 111 of them died, while 381,000 Britons visited Thailand and 224 of them died.

Nevertheless, a series of recent rapes and deaths — many involving drugs and British citizens — have created the perception that Goa is no longer safe for young backpackers, especially girls. Last week another British citizen, Michael Harvey, was found dead on March 1 in his room near Ashwem beach, just north of Anjuna. Police do not suspect foul play in that case, but are investigating whether narcotics were involved. A neighbour who saw Mr Harvey the night before he died described him as a “typical Goa train wreck”.

Also last week two Japanese citizens were reported to have died from overdoses in Anjuna.

Overdoses are nothing new to Goa, especially the more “hippy” parts such as Anjuna. But long-term residents say that they appear to be getting more frequent as ever-larger numbers of Western tourists visit in search of ever-more extreme highs.

While the hippies of the 1960s took LSD, marijuana and opium, the Westerners who pioneered beach raves in the 1990s were fuelled by LSD, Ecstasy and amphetamines.

The latest wave of foreign visitors — young budget tourists from Britain, Russian and Israel in particular — typically stay for two weeks and look for Ecstasy, cocaine or ketamine. There are also growing quantities of crack and heroin on the local market, which is now worth millions of pounds every year, police and local people say. “When I came back I thought I would stay,” said one Goan owner of a beach shack who spent several years in Britain. “Now I don’t want to. It’s ruined.”

Many Goans and foreigners around Anjuna say that the links between the drug dealers and the local police have undermined overall law and order.

There is also mounting evidence that local dealers target young foreign women, often giving them cocaine and Ecstasy free, and then sexually assault them when they are high.

“It used to be just that they would try to charm these girls — like beach bar boys around the world, but this is a lot nastier,” said one foreign resident who frequents Anjuna’s beach bars.

Foreign women are particularly concerned by a string of recent sexual assaults on tourists, including a British woman who was raped in January.

Troubled destination

— Denise Higgins, 52, a British citizen of Indian descent, was found in a pool of blood with a kitchen knife in her neck in April 2007. She was building a house in Goa. The suspect is a local man whom she had befriended

— Stephen Bennett was beaten to death by a gang of men and found hanging from a mango tree in December 2006. Police claimed at first that he had committed suicide, then that he was trying to buy drugs when he was killed

— Adrian Duggan was found guilty in 2005 of killing his girlfriend on Christmas Day in 2003 while on holiday in Goa. Duggan said they were attacked by an intruder

— A tourist, 43, was raped by three men in Betalbatim, southern Goa, in May 2000. The gang stole her key, jewellery and money. It was the third reported rape of a British woman in Goa in a year

— George Wigan, grandson of the 13th Baron of Kinnaird of Rossie and heir to a multimillion-pound fortune, died in February 1998, a week after being mugged in Goa

Source: Times database

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