Murdered tourist’s partner unhappy with probe
Andrew Jordan, the common-law husband of Liga Skromane who was gang-raped and killed in Kovalam here last year, says the police investigation was flawed.
The Irish national arrived here on Wednesday on the eve of the hearing in a local court to set a date for the trial of two defendants now out on bail.
“I had a biter experience in the state of being completely ignored by authorities,” he told Gulf Today.
“I have my grave doubts about the way this case is being handled, and I suspect that a coverup has been atempted.” Skromane, 33, a “depressed” Latvian woman setled in Dublin who was on a wellness trip to the southern state went missing from her wellness centre 30 km away on March 14 last year.
More than a month later, two anglers found her decomposed body with the severed head in an isolated mangrove forest in the seaside getaway.
The police arrested two men Udayan, 24, and Umesh, 28, and charged them with rape and murder, saying they lured her offering cannabis and killed ater a gang rape.
Jordan says the authorities gagged him and bundled him onto a plane before cremating her body here in haste with the permission of her sister fearing tourist backlash. “I was put in a hospital for two days and in a “safe house” for three days. I was under constant guard, no communication with the outside world,” he said.
“There got no information about Liga. They walked me onto a plane to Dublin, paid for by my pressurised mother who was terrified by claims that I would be locked up.”
He wrote many leters to the police to know the progress in the investigation, but none got even an acknowledgement. He returned to ascertain what has caused the delay in proceedings.
Last month in a video message to a local media, Ilze Skromane expressed deep anguish over the inordinate delay to get justice for her sister, while thanking the government for “the necessary steps to help find Liga”.
She also sent an email to chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan on her death anniversary seeking a special court for trial, as the “rapists continued to roam free on streets”.
Jordan says since Liga’s family decided to put this tragedy behind them and “do not wish to have any interaction with the proceeding of this case,” it leaves him “in a very frustrating position.”