A drug dealer gave Scarlett Keeling cocaine and Ecstasy before a local bartender raped her, police said yesterday as they held both men on suspicion of raping and murdering the 15-year-old English girl.

But even as police announced that they had “almost cracked” the case, Scarlett’s mother, Fiona MacKeown, said that she was not satisfied. She continued to push for an investigation by the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) into why police initially claimed that her daughter drowned. The British mother, from Bideford, Devon, has accused local police, politicians and drug dealers of trying to cover up the rape and murder.

Placido Carvalho appeared in court in Goa yesterday to be remanded in custody for 14 days on suspicion of rape, murder and supplying drugs with intent to cause harm, police said.

Samson D’Souza, a 29-year-old local bartender, was also remanded in custody for 14 days on Monday on suspicion of statutory rape, rape and murder after witnesses said that they saw him sexually assaulting Scarlett.

Witnesses say that both men were in Lui’s bar on Anjuna beach when she stumbled in at about 3am on February 18, about 3½ hours before her half-naked body was found on the beach.

Police said they believed that Mr Carvalho had given Scarlett cocaine and Ecstasy in Lui’s, and Mr D’Souza had raped her twice and then fled after she started to faint, possibly from an overdose.

“He dumped the girl then and there, who at this time must be half-dead,” said Kishan Kumar, the Goan Inspector-General of Police. He said that she most likely then drowned in the shallows or choked to death in the sand, although forensic science tests could clarify her exact cause of death by Wednesday. But he insisted that both men could face rape and murder charges because they had “common intention”.

Mr D’Souza and Mr Carvalho both deny rape and murder. The former says he had consensual sexual contact with Scarlett.

Digambar Kamat, the Chief Minister of Goa, has turned down Mrs MacKeown’s request to hand the case to the CBI and promised that his police force would solve the case this week. But Mrs MacKeown, 43, said she had lost faith in the leadership of Goa’s police and renewed her appeal to Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, to intervene. “The arrest of two low-level persons, to my mind, is certainly not a completion of the investigations,” she said. “I believe it is an extension of the original cover-up.”

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