Fiona MacKeown, whose 15-year-old daughter was drugged, raped and murdered on an Indian beach, is using the help of Kate and Gerry McCann's public relations guru in her fight for justice, it was revealed today.

Miss MacKeown, who returns to India today in pursuit of the truth over Scarlett Keeling's brutal slaying, is hoping spin doctor Clarence Mitchell can prevent negative publicity further hurting her tarnished reputation and put pressure on the Indian authourities to keep the investigation going.

Like the embattled McCanns, she has been accused of neglecting her eldest daughter, faced a hostile foreign police force that did all it could to botch the investigation and seen a media behave first as friend and then as foe.

Defiant: Fiona MacKeown is defending her reputation as a mother

In desperation, she contacted Mr Mitchell, the former BBC correspondent and Whitehall mandarin turned mouthpiece for the McCanns, to put pressure on the Indian police and government to keep its investigation going.

The inquiry was prompted by Fiona's perseverance and has proved incredibly damaging to the lucrative tourism industry in the holiday state of Goa.

Mr Mitchell, who is offering advice free, said: "When she first contacted me, she was a little bit lost."

Miss MacKeown is returning to India, despite the risk of arrest, to conduct interviews over the next eight days to keep up pressure on the authorities.

PR guru: Clarence Mitchell speaks to the press, flanked by Kate and Gerry McCann

She says: "What I have been through is horrific, but what Kate and Gerry have been through is even more horrific.

"Their nightmare has been worse. It has gone on for so long. You can see it in her face. I think I have a fair idea now what happened to Scarlett.

"They don't know what happened to Madeleine."

Mrs MacKeown is still defending her record as a mother, despite leaving Scarlett, who was just 15, by herself in India before she was raped and murdered in mysterious circumstances in the popular Indian beach resort of Goa.

Miss MacKeown, 43, who lives in a rundown caravan site in Devon, said: "Scarlett was a very strong-willed and mature girl for her age and she wanted to be independent. She was very like me.

"Maybe I was naive about the mindset of Indian men but this could have happened in the UK. What if she had gone on a school trip to London and been killed there? The only difference is police here would have taken it seriously from the start."

The mother-of-eight, has revealed her first visit to the mortuary in Goa to identify Scarlett's body, discovered in the beach resort of Anjuna on 18 February.

She was escorted by four policemen, one of whom pulled off the covers to reveal her daughter's naked body.

Victim: Scarlett, 15, was relaxed and happy before she was raped and murdered on a beach in Goa

She quickly replaced the sheet, not spotting the abrasions and marks that covered the corpse.

"I did notice a mark on her head and another under her eye which at the time the police said was a result of her head bobbing up and down in the water," she says.

"But locals had said Scarlett was found on the beach and that was my first suspicion."

Police at first said Scarlett had died of a drugs overdose or had drowned accidentally but a second post mortem examination carried out at Fiona's insistence revealed more than 50 bruises to the body and concluded she had been given ecstasy, cocaine and LSD on the night she died and that she had been raped and murdered.

Two men are in custody for the murder but Fiona suspects at least one other is implicated and has so far bribed his way out of trouble.

During her return to India she will seek a full inquiry, despite acknowledging the risks involved.

She said: "I have been told they will try to do me for drugs.

"They are trying to insinuate I am a drugs runner.

"The defence lawyer is claiming it and so is one of the government ministers.

"They have also said I should be charged with manslaughter for the bohemian way I bring up my children."

The first time she flew to India was in November, when she travelled with her then boyfriend Rob Clarke - the couple have since split and no longer speak - and eight of her nine children.

Missing: Madeleine McCann is still missing, nearly a year on from her disappearance

"Scarlett had insisted on staying in Anjuna with a 25-year-old man.

Miss MacKeown thought, naively, he was just a friend. In fact, local tour guide Julio Lobowas was Scarlett's lover, a fact revealed in telling and hurtful diary extracts leaked by Goan police to the local media.

Meanwhile, Miss MacKeown was many hours' drive away in a neighbouring province, in regular telephone contact but trusting that her daughter, who had a boyfriend back in Devon, was in safe hands.

Then four days before Scarlett was discovered dead, Fiona received news from England that her eldest son Halloran, 19, had almost died in a road accident.

The night before Scarlett was killed, Fiona telephoned her daughter to tell her they were going home.

"I told Scarlett about the accident and she was very upset.

"I said we were going home and she was really pleased," recalls Fiona.

They agreed to meet at a destination six hours' drive away but Scarlett never made it.

What happened on the night is still not clear but with Julio ill and in bed, Scarlett embarked on a drinking bender with a girlfriend.

Later, she was raped on the beach - her mother insists she was drugged - and forcibly drowned.