INNOCENT

went out to buy cigarettes and was seen taking a rickshaw to Kovalam beach.

Two men were arrested and charged with murder and rape but were released on bail until a trial date is set.

Police claim they admitted meeting Liga on the beach before luring her to the mangrove swamp to smoke marijuana where she was repeatedly raped after she passed out. When she woke up they said they accidentally strangled her while trying to restrain her and strung her body up on the tree to make it look like suicide. But Andrew said there are holes with the theory including the designer Italian woollen jumper Liga was wearing when he identified her body on April 20. He said: “The two suspects said they were ‘raping her all day’ but one of them then went home and got her a jumper – an expensive Italian designer jumper – when she said she was cold. If you’re raping someone I think it’s unlikely you suddenly start caring about their temperature. It was 35C – not cold even at night.”

THEORY

He also questions the official theory that Liga was killed the day she disappeared as forensic experts have told him her remains were not sufficiently decomposed for her to have died at that spot 40 days earlier.

Andrew said: “It’s like her body had been kept in a dry, cold place which prevented further decomposition.

“She must have been moved to that mangrove not long before she was found.

“Someone would have seen her or someone would have smelt the body if it really had been there for 40 days.” Andrew also believes Liga’s injuries – confirmed at postmortem – cast doubt over the official theory she had been accidentally strangled.

He said: “She suffered blunt force trauma to her neck which was given as her cause of death. It tore the nerves and fractured thyroid cartilage.

“The severity of the injury is not consistent with being accidentally strangled by an arm around her neck as she was being restrained.

“Ten of her teeth were also missing. If these teeth fell out after death as the police investigation suggests, they would have been easily recovered near her body.”

Manoj Abraham, Inspector General of Police in Thiruvanthapuram district