The rape and murder of British teenager Scarlett Keeling in Goa last month underscores yet again not only the extreme vulnerability of tourists – especially women – to violence in this country but worse, the shocking reluctance of authorities to deal with the problem. Scarlett was drugged, then repeatedly raped before she was left on the beach to drown. When her body was found, the Goa police was quick to attribute her death to drowning. It was only on her mother’s insistence that the case was re-investigated and a second post-mortem carried out. Scarlett’s death and the events leading to it are deeply upsetting. Some have accused the mother of negligence. Indeed, the manner in which she left her young daughter in Goa amidst strangers, even as she headed off to travel elsewhere is distressing. But this does not absolve Goa’s authorities of much of the responsibility for the crime. After all, it is they who turned a blind eye to sex tourism and drug mafias taking root in the state. It is they who allowed this idyllic state to become a haven for crime.

If in the past it was Goa’s beaches and its stress-free lifestyle that was its major attraction, increasingly in recent years, it is the easy availability of designer drugs and sex tourism – even paedophilia – that has drawn thousands here. The involvement of the mafia in the drugs-sex racket has been obvious for several years. Still, the Goa government did little to tackle the problem. The reasons for this shocking laxity are not hard to find. Officials often blamed public opposition to the government cracking down on the rave parties and sex trade – the argument was that this would undermine the tourism industry here. But the truth is that it is the involvement of politicians and police in the crime networks that made authorities reluctant to act against their own.

Scarlett’s murder is not an isolated case. Sixty-one foreign tourists died in Goa alone last year. Sixteen have died since January this year. If one adds Indians who died of unnatural causes in Goa, this figure would be much higher. This is cause for serious concern and warrants immediate action. Goa has become a hub of sleaze and crime. A powerful people’s movement in Goa was successful in pushing the government to reverse its decision to set up SEZs, which were threatening the state’s ecology and environment. A similar people’s movement is required now to get the government to clean up Goa.