A 36-year-old Briton who had claimed to know something about the circumstances leading to Scarlett Keeling’s death, finally turned up before the police in Goa on Monday, almost a month after he went “missing”.
Michael Anthony Mannion was being interrogated till late Monday evening by North Goa Superintendent of Police Bosco George for more leads in the Keeling case. Police sources said however that Mannion, also known as Masala Mike, had not produced any new information and his statement appeared “tutored”.

“He told us he had seen Samson D’Souza (the main accused in the case) in a compromising position with Scarlett on the beach, and that she had left Lui’s shack accompanied by a man named Murli,” George told Deccan Herald. The police said Murli, who worked in another Anjuna shack had already been interrogated and he is not a suspect in the case. Mannion who had claimed in interviews to the British media that he had left Goa because he “feared” for his life after Scarlett’s death, has made no disclosures so far about drugs used the night Scarlett came to Lui’s Bar.

He has also not implicated Placido Carvalho, the second man arrested in the case.  Questions are being asked about why Mannion did not call for help, alert others or even go to Scarlett’s rescue himself, if he saw her being raped. Mannion told the police he arrived in Goa on February 1. Before he decided to make himself available for interrogation to the police Mannion dished out interviews to TV channels. He had also accused the British High Commission of doing nothing to protect him.

Scarlett’s mother Fiona MacKeown and her friends positioned themselves  outside the North Goa police headquarters while Mannion’s statement was being recorded.