This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The mother of a British backpacker who was found dead in an Indian tourist resort has paid tribute to her “beautiful and kind-hearted” daughter.

A murder investigation has been launched after the body of Danielle McLaughlin, 28, was found bruised and naked in a field in Canacona, in the southern part of Goa.

McLaughlin, a dual British-Irish citizen, was thought to have been visiting the area with a friend to celebrate the Holi festival.



Her mother, Andrea Brannigan, said: “The family would like to express our thanks to all who have got in touch since receiving this awful news.



“As you can expect, we are finding it very difficult at this trying time. Danielle will be sadly missed by us all.”

McLaughlin’s body was found “lying in a pool of blood without clothes and there were injuries on the head and face”, Sammy Tavares, the deputy superintendent of Canacona police, told local media.

A man named Vikas Bhagat had been arrested in connection with McLaughlin’s death, police said. Her body was on Wednesday undergoing a postmortem in the state capital, Panjim, to determine if she was sexually assaulted.

Detectives said they had questioned up to 15 people over the murder of McLaughlin, who is understood to have been travelling on a British passport.

McLaughlin, originally from Buncrana in County Donegal and thought to have been living in England, had just arrived from the north of the state and had been at a party on Monday night at the popular Palolem beach.

Detectives have been studying CCTV footage from the beachside shacks she visited, working with sniffer dogs and forensic science teams. While police found her clothes, they have yet to locate a murder weapon.

McLaughlin’s body was discovered by a farmer, Prashant Komarpant, near Deobag beach on Tuesday morning, about 3.5 miles (6km) from Palolem. She had suffered extensive injuries to her face.

Divyam Sugeet, a business owner in the area, said: “I was at the crime scene, it was really horrible. The whole community is shaken up.”



Residents planned to gather, on Wednesday evening, for a vigil at the spot where her body was found, he said.

Alex Carpenter, 25, a British national who runs environmental projects near Palolem, told the Guardian McLaughlin had spent the night before her death sleeping at his property.

“She came down with a friend of mine, she stayed at my place on Sunday night,” he said.

“We had a small ceremony with friends, about 16 people. We burned the statue of an eagle. We played music. She seemed entirely normal, a really interesting person.”

Carpenter said he left at about 2pm the following day – the last time he saw her alive.

He was asked by police to help identify her body the next morning.

“There were about 20 or 30 people standing very close to the crime scene,” he said.

“She was in a really bad way. I had to identify her by her hair, her skin colour and certain tattoos.”

He said McLaughlin had attended a Holi party at the Green Park resort in Palolem beach.

A mutual friend had left the party at 8.30pm and asked McLaughlin to join her, “but she decided to stay, she’d found a room in Palolem”, Carpenter said.

The last time his friends had seen her was at about 9.30pm when she was dancing. She disappeared from the party shortly after, he said.

Carpenter also accompanied McLaughlin’s body to the medical examiner.

He said he had “questions around the police approach”, adding: “This is something that should be done, I believe, in the presence of a consular official, or a close friend of hers. I was neither. I only knew her for 20 hours.”



McLaughlin had been in Ireland when she left to go backpacking around India in February. The Irish embassy said it was in contact with Indian authorities.

Father Francis Bradley, a priest from St Mary’s church in Buncrana, said he had visited the McLaughlin family on Wednesday morning, and described Danielle’s death as an “immense loss” during an interview with a local radio station.

He told BBC Radio Foyle: “Her family are understandably distraught at what has happened.

“The loss is immense and the circumstances of that death, the distance between where it happened and where the family are, adds to the difficulty that the family feel at this time.”

He added that McLaughlin, a former pupil at Buncrana’s Irish language school, Scoil Mhuire, was a “happy-go-lucky” young woman who loved travelling.

He said: “I met the young lady in question a few months ago at the time that her grandfather was gravely ill and she was very close to her grandfather, who subsequently died. She seemed a happy go-lucky, friendly, quiet girl.

“To find that there could be malice or something very sinister involved in the way in which someone died is particularly disturbing and has its own challenge that we as a community will have to face.”

The principal of her former school, Rosaleen Grant, said teachers and pupils were “utterly shattered and devastated”.

She said: “She was a very confident, sociable, outgoing girl of a very caring nature. A number of the staff would have known her really well, so it’s just the sense of loss and the fact she’s so far from home makes it so tragic.

“She loved taking part in school musicals, she did Irish dancing, she was involved in sports and athletics. She was just an all-rounder, really.”

In her final post on Facebook, written in late February, McLaughlin told her friends she was “off on another adventure” to Goa.

She wrote: “Thank you to all my friends and family for making home so special and always looking after me. I am very grateful and the luckiest person I know … off on another adventure.”



Australian backpacker Sün Ithilwen said she met McLaughlin when she passed through the Indian city of Rishikesh on her travels.

“She was super sweet, always happy and smiling,” she said. “To know the circumstances of her death is one thing, but knowing how vibrant and amazing she was, it just breaks my heart.”

She said McLaughlin had been “super aware” of the dangers of travelling alone in India. “But she trusted in life and love,” she said.

Former colleagues of McLaughlin, who reportedly studied at John Moores University in Liverpool and had lived in Sefton, Merseyside, said she was “so full of life” and had left a couple of years ago to go travelling.

Tracy Leigh, the manager at the Pump House pub in the Albert Dock in Liverpool, where McLaughlin had previously worked, said: “She was a lovely young girl and so full of life. All the staff are desperately sorry and send their condolences to her family. It is a shocking incident – she was so young.”

Rena Donaghey, a councillor in Buncrana,said her death had left the whole community in deep shock.

Meanwhile, McLaughlin’s close friend, Christy Duffy, has already raised several thousand euros on a fundraising website to help pay for the funeral and repatriation costs.

He said: “There is nothing I need to say about Danielle, as anyone who knew her knew that she was a beautiful and kind-hearted, funny young lady who loved life and was a loyal and devoted friend, sister and daughter.”

In September two men were acquitted of involvement in the 2008 death of Scarlett Keeling, 15, from Devon, whose body was found on Anjuna beach in the north of the state of Goa.

The teenager’s death was initially ruled an accidental drowning but pressure from her mother forced police to conduct a second postmortem, which revealed evidence of ecstasy, cocaine and LSD in her body. It also showed 50 cuts and bruises and evidence of sexual assault.

The UK Foreign Office advises that women should use caution when travelling in India and reports that sexual assault cases are increasing.

In Goa in particular, the Foreign Office warns there have been reports of “drinks being spiked and travellers, including British nationals, subsequently being robbed, sexually assaulted or dying”.

It adds: “There have also been reports of locals posing as police officers or government officials in order to extort money, so be alert if approached. Avoid beaches after dark.”