After the arrest of two locals, barman Samson D'Souza and Placid Carvalho, who allegedly drugged and raped Scarlette before leaving her to die, the Goa police have taken her boyfriend Julio Lobo into the scanner in the teenager death case.
Lobo, who has been already booked for 'grave sexual assault' was on Saturday taken for medical examination, the police said. "It is a part of investigation. He is being examined to ascertain whether he is sexually active," superintendent of police Bosco George told PTI.
The police, during their initial investigation, had questioned the 21-year-old, who had said that he had left Scarlette with another Spanish female friend on the eve of February 18, but did not suspect him in the case.
Lobo got friendly with the slain British girl Scarlette Keeling, a little after she arrived in Goa with her mother in November 2007. Police investigations have revealed that the 15-year-old, who was found dead on Anjuna beach on February 18, had left her mother and shifted to live with Lobo three weeks before her death.
The police have already arrested D'Souza and Carvalho in the case. After claiming to have cracked the case, the police are now prosecuting Lobo under the Goa Children's Act, 2003.
Lobo is in the dock as Scarlette was a minor. The investigating authorities said that, if convicted in the court, Lobo will face severe punishment for having sex with the minor as it amounts to grave sexual abuse as per Indian laws.
Earlier, anticipating arrest, Lobo had moved the Goa Children's Court and secured a bail. Three weeks before her death, Scarlette had shifted to Lobo's place at Siolim, few kilometres away from Anjuna beach. Scarlette's diary, which is possessed by the police, speaks of her sexual encounter with Lobo.
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