'I'm just glad it's over' - Buncrana mum on her battle for justice for Danielle

“I’m just glad it’s over.” It took almost eight years for Buncrana mum Andrea Brannigan to get justice for her beautiful daughter.

Vikat Bhagat was found guilty of murder seven years and 11 months to the day after Danielle McLaughlin’s lifeless and battered body was found near a beach in Goa, India. Andrea was relentless in her fight for truth and justice for her firstborn child, whose life was brutally ended on March 14, 2017, just over a month after her 28th birthday.

She lobbied everyone she could think of, from TDs and MPs; to anyone who would help. She singles out Buncrana TD Pádraig MacLochlainn as having been particularly helpful.

“I had no choice,” Andrea says, saying how she has maintained her persistence over the years. “Danielle is the first foreigner who was murdered in Goa to get justice.”

Last Monday, February 17, the court sentenced Bhagat to "rigorous" life imprisonment for murder. He also received a second life term for rape, and three years for destroying evidence. All the sentences are to run concurrently.

“I just felt relief,” Andrea said of the moment she realised her daughter’s killer had finally been found guilty of murder.
“It hasn’t sunk in yet. It’s just a relief, and now it’s about moving on.”

It’s not typical for a family to attend a courtroom in India - and Andrea was unsure whether she and her daughter Jolene and Danielle’s close friend Louise McMenamin, would be allowed to stay and hear the verdict.

The local trio had travelled to Goa on Monday, February 10, returning relieved to Inishowen eight days later, last Tuesday, February 18.

All the court proceedings were in English and Goa, a former Portuguese colony, operates under a system derived from Portuguese law.

“We couldn’t hear the judge, she was far away in the courtroom and had no microphone. She was talking to the lawyers,” Andrea explains. “It wasn’t until one of the investigating policemen, who we’d had some meetings with in the days beforehand, turned around with a smile that we knew he had been found guilty.”

Irish and British embassy staff were also present in the court. The public prosecutor and Andrea’s lawyer both argued for the death penalty after the verdict was delivered, but the judge reserved her position until sentencing last Monday. The death penalty is rare in Goa. Bhagat got a ‘remainder of life’ sentence, on top of 14 years, and three years for destroying evidence.

“I know Danielle was against the death penalty, so I left it with the judge,” Andrea adds. “I don’t think he expected what happened [the guilty verdict].”

At the sentencing hearing, the defendant was initially sitting in the row just behind Andrea, Jolene and Louise. There were no words nor signs of remorse for what he’d done.

“He wore a mask and didn’t look at us at all,” Andrea says. “We could all see that he had no remorse.”

Bhagat has 90 days to lodge an appeal, and his solicitors have already said he will. That appeal will go to the High Court and ultimately to the Supreme Court in Delhi.

“I’ll not be caught up in whatever appeals he takes," Andrea continues. "For now, I just have to read through the judgement. It runs to over 350 pages.”

After sentencing, Bhagat was held in a room where he was finger-printed. Andrea and the girls were in the same room, and stayed there until he was taken away three hours later.

“We weren’t moving until he was moving,” she says. “There was him and four prison officers. The three of us, and a reporter. The girls stared him out of it, but he only looked around once, when Louise spoke aloud.”

Andrea had never travelled to India before and never could have imagined she would be there in such awful circumstances last week. Danielle had loved the country.

“I could see the beauty of the place that Danielle had talked about,” Andrea says. “The people we met were lovely. The police officers and public prosecutors were very nice too.”

When Andrea shared a memorial card containing photos of Danielle with the chief investigating police officer and a colleague, they immediately burst into tears.

“Other than the way they found her, they’d never seen a photo of Danielle and they just started crying,” she adds. “They thought of her like their daughter.”

Danielle’s belongings from her 2017 trip remain in Goa, kept as evidence. Understandably, her daughter’s things are very precious to Andrea.

“I want them back naturally enough. When we were getting ready to go home, the police investigator came to meet us and reassure us that they’d do what they could to help retrieve her belongings.”

Andrea and the girls stayed close to the location where Danielle was murdered and visited the exact spot where her body was found.

“It would have been dark and she must have been so scared that night," Andrea adds. He took her down a road and into a field. She must have known. “It was hard,” she said of going to the place where Danielle’s body was found. “We had seen photographs of it, and could recognise it as soon as we came to it. She must have been so scared. It was tough to visit the site.”

Andrea met a woman from Ireland who had met Danielle in Goa, and travelled a bit with her. They visit the site where Danielle was found together, maintaining a little memorial.

The Buncrana woman and the girls maintained as low a profile as possible while in Canacona.

“It was dangerous because the killer was from there, and he had a lot of connections in the area,” Andrea says. “We wanted to stay there because it was near the place where Danielle was found, but for own sakes we kept a low profile.”

Andrea got chatting to a shopkeeper who twigged her accent was Irish, and immediately spoke about how his friend ‘Daniella’ had been killed.

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“That’s my friend Daniella, he said, when I showed him a photo,” Andrea smiled. “I explained then who I was and we talked for a while.”

“It was good to travel there and see what Danielle had seen. It was good to meet the police and the prosecutors, and it was my first time to meet my lawyer Vikram.”

Des Doherty is the local solicitor Andrea had. He intended to travel to India too, but was tied up with the Omagh Bombing Inquiry. Andrea isn’t a big user of social media, and is apologetic that she hasn’t been able to respond to all the messages she has been inundated with since the verdict.

“We couldn’t find good Wifi, so I just posted the word ‘Guilty’ on my Facebook page," she says. "Jolene and Louise teased me that after eight years of fighting all I could manage was a single word.”

Andrea now wants an inquest to be held here into Danielle’s death and she intends to lobby Donegal Coroner Dr Denis McCauley for one.

“If you die abroad, you’re not entitled to an inquest here,” she says. “Dr Marie Cassidy carried out a post-mortem examination of Danielle, and I’d like the Coroner to hold an inquest here.

“I think there’s only ever been three inquests [in the Republic of Ireland] for people who died abroad, but I’d like one for Danielle too. “They do it different in the North. If Danielle had been living in Derry, she would automatically get an inquest. The UK carries out inquests like that, but Ireland doesn’t.

“I’ve never been part of the Coroner's court process – and there are more people than me in the same situation – and it would be a help.
“Hopefully the Donegal Coroner will grant an inquest. I believe anyone who dies abroad should be granted one. I’ve spoken to families whose children died abroad, and they didn’t get a post-mortem exam when they came back here.”

An amendment to the State’s Victim Charter to provide better help and consular assistance for people who die in violent circumstances abroad was named for Danielle.

“Things needed to be changed,” Andrea says. “People need to be treated the same, but we’re not. They forget about people like us.”

Under the Danielle McLaughlin Amendment, adopted by the Irish Government in 2018, embassies and diplomatic staff have the service they need to provide to the victims of crime and their families clearly spelt out.

Andrea spoke about how she’d had a bad experience with the Irish Embassy until the last few months when a new case officer was appointed and with whom she bonded. By contrast, her dealings with the British Embassy staff were always positive.
Danielle had been born in Glasgow, prematurely while Andrea was on holiday there, but was a Buncrana girl through and through. Like many young people here, Danielle occasionally used her British passport for ease of travel.

Andrea desperately misses her daughter. The void and pain left by her absence will never go away.

“I miss her terribly," she says. "We were very close. We fought, times. I wanted her to settle down, but she wasn’t for settling. “I miss chatting to her. We chatted every single day. It’s nuts, but I still message her sometimes. “On the day she died, she told me she was with him and that she was safe.”

In a conversation that lasts an hour, Andrea never once speaks the killer’s name. She brings out her phone to show the last ever message Danielle sent.

“Danielle would never have said who she was with when she was abroad," Andrea says. "It’d be different if she was up the town in Buncrana, she’d say who she was with because I’d know them. “But abroad, we didn’t know those people so she never named them. But she named him.”

It was evidence that was later made available to the police in India. Andrea was glad that daughter Jolene and Danielle’s best friend Louise McMenamin travelled with her to India.

“It was great having them there for the support and everything," Andrea says. £If I missed something, they were picking it up. They were brilliant. “Louise was the one who told me that Danielle had passed away. She’d heard it first. Louise was like a sister to Danielle, and they did a while lot of things together.

“It was good for her to go out there. She thought she’d done all her grieving, but when she went there, she realised there was more.”

Mum Andrea is now happy to be home, having achieved a measure of justice and ‘closure’ for the family. She says: “I’m enjoying being back with my girls, my youngest is only 11. “My 20-year-old had to come home from university in Liverpool to watch my girls (17 and 11). “What I wanted was him found guilty, and he was. “And he won’t get out of prison. He has a whole of life term to serve.”

Danielle was the eldest of her six girls. “They miss their big sister," Andrea says. "They would have went to her for everything.”