Thiruvananthapuram: Killed Latvian woman’s hubby cries foul

Thiruvananthapuram: The husband of the murdered Latvian woman has alleged loopholes in the investigation as the Thiruvananthapuram district court-I postponed the hearing of the case from Thursday to June 11.

It may be recalled that Latvian tourist Liga Skromane, 33, who went missing from an ayurveda resort at Kovalam on March 14 last year, was found dead in an isolated mangroves forest on the banks of Karamana river on April 20.

The police arrested two men, Umesh and Udayan, who had approached the woman pretending to be tourist guides and taken her to the mangrove forest. They offered her drugs and then raped her before strangling her to death. The duo fled the scene after hanging her from a tree to make it look like a suicide.

Liga who lived in Ireland with her partner Andrew Jordan had come to Kerala with her sister to get ayurvedic treatment for depression.

Jordan has raised nine questions about the whole incident and the consequent police investigations. While the witnesses claimed that they had seen the woman in the company of four persons before she went missing, only two accused had been included in the list.

Jordan told this paper that the Ireland embassy did not extend much help. "I approached the embassy as I am an Irish citizen. They did not want to get involved as my wife was not an Irish national. The Latvian embassy also kept off it as Latvia did not want to get into diplomatic trouble, he said.

The Kerala police and the tourism department wanted to avoid publicity for the incident to protect the tourism revenue. The police were reluctant to give him details of the case.

He felt that the initial prime suspect was dropped from the list due to political interests.

It was mysterious that Liga's body did not show signs of advanced decomposition though it was said that she was murdered at Panathura on March 14 and her body had remained in the mangrove forest for over 40 days. In fact, the corpse was relatively intact with the presence of  maggots on the organs and flesh. The damage on the gnawed-off foot was quite fresh, said Jordan

When the body was discovered, she was wearing a sweatshirt which didn't belong to her. Where did it come from? Why would she need it if she had indeed been killed in the early evening of March 14 when the temperature didn't drop below 39 degrees Celsius, he said.

It was said that one of the accused had brought it from his house where he reportedly had a large collection of garments belonging to various female tourists. This is a strangely courteous gesture to someone he had just raped, he said.

"Why were the ten teeth missing from her jaw bone not recovered from the scene of the crime? The preliminary autopsy report states that they 'fell out' during post-mortem.  We have still not been furnished with the final post-mortem report," Jordan said.

The highly dubious 'confession' states that she was lured into the forest to smoke cannabis. But she never had used any drugs, especially psychoactive drugs, Jordan said.

The confession also says she spent several hours with the accused which is difficult to believe. She did not want to keep her friends and family in suspense about her whereabouts even at the height of her mental distress, he said.

"Why was the body cremated in a hurry, only days after the post-mortem was carried out? How is it that the accused were released on bail? They both have long histories of sexual assault on minors and should have been locked up a long time ago," he said.