The mother of a British teenager killed in India faces a possible jail term after she admitted falsely claiming 19,000 pounds (21,000 euros, 29,000 dollars) in state benefits Friday. Fiona MacKeown's 15-year-old daughter Scarlett Keeling was found dead on the popular Anjuna beach in Goa in February 2008.
MacKeown, 44, admitted the fraud between 2005 and 2008 at a hearing at Exeter, south-west England. On Friday, a court hearing in India set a start date of April 5 for the trial of two men charged over her daughter's killing. Her sentencing date was adjourned to a date to be fixed after April 16 because her defence lawyer said she needed to attend the trial in India.
Before the hearing, MacKeown said she was sceptical that the two accused men, Samson D'Souza and Placido Carvalho, would be convicted. Police in Goa initially said Keeling, from Devon county, south-west England, had drowned during a six-month family holiday to India. But pressure from MacKeown forced the authorities to conduct a second post-mortem examination and treat the case as murder. Keeling was allegedly given a cocktail of illegal drugs before she died. Her mother was on a trip to the neighbouring state of Karnataka when it happened.