By Dylan Welch and Matt Wade in Vrindavan

February 5, 2008

Anandalila “Lila” Salter, the Australian teenager who was raped and shot by a stalker in India three days ago, has died surrounded by her family and friends in India.

She died of heart failure resulting from her injuries about 2.15am (7.45am AEDT) in the Indian holy city of Vrindavan, where she had been brought after doctors said they could not remove the bullet that had lodged in her brain.

“[The family] was hoping to find a surgeon in the world who could have removed the bullet fragments but it was hope against hope, the damage was just too extensive,” Lila’s Australian-based uncle Brian Salter, 55, said this morning.

Mr Salter received a text message from his brother, Lila’s father Ian, about half an hour after she died, which read: “Anandalila left this world in a blaze of Kirtan.” Kirtan is the communal singing of sacred Hare Krishna hymns.

Lila’s body would now be cremated during a traditional ceremony on the banks of a nearby river, Mr Salter said.

Mr Salter also said the family had asked that their thanks be expressed to all the Australians who had offered their support during the last few days.

Last night the family organised an ambulance fitted with life-support equipment to bring Lila back to a guesthouse in Vrindavan, where she was surrounded by family and members of the Vrindavan Hare Krishna community.

The trip came after doctors at the hospital in New Delhi where Lila had lain since the shooting said they were unable to remove the bullet that had lodged in her brain.

Police yesterday announced they would drop the investigation into the shooting.

Lila’s attacker, 28-year-old Saurav Singh, the nephew of a former cabinet minister in Uttar Pradesh, shot her three times with his pistol, then shot himself dead.

“He is already dead so no further action in this case is possible. There is nothing more to investigate,” an Indian police spokesman said yesterday.

But the family is understood to be angry with police inaction in the lead-up to the shooting. Lila’s mother, Susan Manning, was quoted previously as saying that the family had warned police about the “psychopath” stalker, but nothing had been done.

“Can you imagine in Australia if somebody raped your daughter? They’d be rounded up straight away,” Mr Salter said.

“But unfortunately India is a little bit of a wild west and that just didn’t happen,” he said.

The family now hoped some action would taken in Delhi over the local police inaction, he said.

“They would like the situation [changed] where they felt powerless to get help from the police because of the extent of corruption that was there [in Vrindavan],” Mr Salter said.

“It was really that loss of proper judicial intervention that was responsible for this and they would hope that culture could be changed.”

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