Saturday, April 14, 2012

Dinesh Kamath's article on 'Anjunaa Beach' that was published in Newsband




Anjunaa Beach is a movie which is inspired by real life incident. Italian-Ukrainian model-actress Nataliya Kozhenova makes her debut in this film. The film narrates the real life story of English teenager Scarlett Keeling, who was found raped and murdered in Goa in 2008.
When Nataliya heard that Anjunaa Beach director Shakeel S Saifee was looking for a girl who resembled Scarlett, Nataliya managed to meet him through a common friend. The resemblence was quite uncanny, and Nataliya bagged her first film. The film was shot on Anjuna beach in Goa, where the actual incident took place, and ran into trouble for not having the required permissions to shoot on the beach. Beaches, bikinis and rape make for a dangerous combination that could spell censor trouble but Nataliya has not appeared in any vulgar scene. Rape is not shown in the film and when the victim's body is found, she is found wearing a swimsuit.
Scarlett was 15 when she died but Nataliya is older. It was difficult to get a 15-year-old girl, who could act well and do this film. The film's name is inspired from the name of the beach where the teenager was murdered. The 15 year old girl was brutally assaulted and left to die at the beach before the body was picked up by the local police. The gruesome incident had damaged the image of Goa as an international tourist destination to a great extent. Veteran Hindi film actor Kiran Kumar and Amita Nangia are also in the film, while Iranian actress Farhanaaz is playing the mother of the murdered teenager.
The Scarlett Keeling case, on which the film is based, involves the murder and rape of a 15-year-old British girl, named Scarlett Eden Keeling in Goa, south-west India. She was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, in 1992; prior to travelling to India she lived in Bideford, Devon. She was on 'wintersun' holiday in India with her siblings, mother and mother's partner; however, she was not in their company when, on 18 February 2008, she was fatally attacked at a beach resort in a part of India that is popular with Western tourists. A local man, Samson D'Souza, 29, was arrested on March 9 2008, and charged with raping Keeling, and remanded in custody. D'Souza has not been charged with murder. Keeling's family accused the police of covering up the murder in February 2008 to protect the tourist industry. The mother of Scarlett Keeling faced police questions about negligence. But her mother Fiona MacKeown denied being negligent. Indian police arrested a second man, named Placido Carvalho, in connection with the death of Keeling, it was reported March 13 2008.
You will get the idea of the content of the film from the information I have gathered about the real life incident on which the film is based. These information were found in the victim's diary.
Scarlett Keeling's diary reveals her sex, drink and drugs lifestyle. The British teenager murdered in India last month kept a diary in which she told how she experimented with sex, drugs and alcohol in the days before her death.
Scarlett Keeling, 15, begins her diary as the family prepares for a six-month trip of a lifetime to India and ends shortly before her death with the words "I'm stuk " and "I want to go home". She talks of taking hallucinogenic drugs and having sex in Britain and with someone she met in Goa. The diary emerged as her mother disclosed that Scarlett was living alone in a guest house in the days before her death and not with the family of the tour guide entrusted with her care.
Despite her mother Fiona MacKeown's claims that Scarlett never took drugs, the diary shows that at a farewell party in Devon the girl, who signs herself ''Scaz", was "drunk, stoned and was trippin' on mushies" (hallucinogenic 'magic' mushrooms). It also graphically describes how, despite being under-age, she was sexually active.
She describes how she met and had sex with Julio Lobo, a tour guide, at a ''full moon" party soon after the family arrived in Goa. The diary becomes progressively darker as Scarlett's state of mind appears to deteriorate. Her last entry, entered beside a doodle of a hangman, says: "I rele rele don't know what to do. I wish something big would happen to make my decision final."
Meanwhile, a British tourist saw Scarlett on the beach with a man whom he named as Samson D'Souza, one of two men arrested by local police on the night she was killed. The tourist had seen and spoken to Scarlett earlier in a bar and she looked intoxicated and was staggering as she spoke to three local men. He saw Scarlett leave the bar at 5 am with a man and five minutes later he also left the bar and saw the man Scarlett left with drive off on his scooter. In the light of the front beam of his scooter, he saw Samson D'Souza on top of Scarlett.
The victim's mother Miss Mackeown denied negligence in leaving her 15-year-old daughter to fend for herself with people she hardly knew and without money or a mobile phone. She maintained that her daughter had been left in the care of Mr Lobo, a 25-year-old tour guide and his aunt at their home in Siolim, while she travelled in neighbouring states with her boyfriend and six other children.
Before leaving for India, Scarlett had written in her diary: "Went to see a mate a last time and then I'm off to India for six months. I'm getting excited. I went to a party last night, got drunk, stoned and was trippin on mushies.”
After the rest of her family left to tour other parts of India, Scarlett appeared to be embracing the wilder side of Goa.
Her diary then said "At the full moon party I met this guy, Julio. I was pretty messed up, like I had taken a pill and drunk a lot of vodka. I don't remember that much but it took like two weeks b4 me and Julio were hangin out regularly."
By her penultimate entry Scarlett seems distressed and says she wants to go home: "I think he is just using me, he says he loves me but I don't think so. He treats me like I'm only with him 4 his money or sex. I want to go home, but I'm stuk"
Her final, undated, entry is accompanied by a picture of a gallows: "I rele rele don't know what to do. I wish something big would happen to make my decision final."
An Indian policeman found the British teenager Scarlett Keeling's naked, battered body lying half-submerged in the sea. An anonymous call had come in to the police station reporting a body near the Shore bar, a popular rave spot on Anjuna beach. The constable described how he found the naked body of a girl lying face down with the waves lapping around it. The eyes were partly open, the mouth was partly open too with froth, while orange-coloured slippers were lying two to three metres away from the body. He dragged her out of the water and covered her with a sheet. Then he informed his superiors and waited for other officers to turn up.
Post-mortem examinations revealed that Scarlett was intoxicated by a cocktail of drink and drugs – ecstasy, cocaine and LSD – on the night she died and was attacked and raped. Her body was covered in bruises and the cause of death was asphyxia and drowning in sand and shallow water.
After the trial, two local people, a bartender, Samson D'Souza, 30, and businessman Placido Carvalho, 42, were charged with culpable homicide, sexual assault, outraging modesty and destroying evidence. Mrs MacKeown was cleared of negligence for leaving her teenage daughter alone.
Thus the movie Anjunaa Beach is based on this above true incident. Do watch the movie.

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