‘We don’t trust Indian cops’

 

 

MUMBAI: Parents of Stephen Bennett, a Briton who was found dead in mysterious circumstances at a Roha village, say that the drug mafia in Goa has killed their son. They also said they don’t have faith in the Indian police which are investigating the case and ridiculed the police versions on their son’s death.

 

Talking to DNA from the UK, Maureen Bennett, mother of the deceased,  said, “We have no faith in the ongoing investigation by the Indian police. We also have our friends out there who are looking into the matter. We believe the drug mafia from Goa is involved in the case.” However, she refused to name the relatives in India.

 

She also reiterated that her son had not boarded a train as the police investigations so far revealed.

 

“My son, who was scared on Baga beach on December 6, returned to his hotel the next morning and retrieved his passport and luggage. A foreigner arriving in a taxi at 7am would obviously have been noticed. We suspect the same people might have abducted him in Panjim,” Maureen said.

 

She added that her son had told her he was neither at a railway station nor travelling by train. ‘The Indian police conveniently changed the train he is said to have boarded. The claim was belied by the fact that my son spoke to me at the same time. He did not have a cellphone and I do not think Indian trains have phones.”

 

Thanks to technology, Maureen has looked at satellite imagery of India, and Maharashtra in particular, on the Internet. She said she could “clearly see many roads through thick forests” on the Goa-Mumbai route. Maureen drove home her point that Bennett may have been taken in a car through such “secluded roads”. 

 

“The pathologist report indicates that my son suffered scratches on his face and body while being carried through dense areas. He could not have reached the forest region without being noticed. The police is only now trying to show fresh evidence to suggest he had in fact been noticed,” she said.

 

She said the two people who went missing from Malsai, where the incident happened, could be important to the case. Moreover, she said the people who took Bennett’s body were familiar with the terrain.

 

“The two Indians behaved very friendly to my son and told him he could accompany them to Mumbai to see the fireworks. But my son told me on  December 7 at noon that though they were friendly, their soft tones suggested “their nasty intentions”.

 

She also said her son told her that he had been drugged and found himself in Panjim on December 6 without knowing where he was.

 

“On December 6, he spoke to me and said he was being intimidated though he had done nothing wrong. He was an actor and loved chatting with people. He may have been mistaken for an undercover agent by the local drug mafia operating out of Baga beach. When I asked him to contact the local police, he said it would serve no purpose as they would hand him back to the same people who are intimidating me,” Maureen said.

 

Contradicting his mother’s version, her daughter, Amanda, who also  spoke to DNA said: “The second autopsy performed in London says Bennett  didn’t take any narcotics. It says his hands were tied and his body was dragged through a rough terrain, giving him bruises all over the body.” Maureen is expected to fly down to India in a fortnight. “She will head for India after Bennett’s funeral and I will join her in a month. There are too many missing links in the police story,” she said.