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Priest Thomasz Kottoor and Sister Sephi were sentenced to life in prison for the 1992 murder of Sister Abhaja, 21, a legal news portal called Bar and Bench reported. The defendants were also found guilty of destroying evidence and Kottoor was also charged with burglary. The court sentenced Kottoor to a fine of 650,000 Indian rupees (slightly more than 2.6 million guilders) and Sephit to 500,000 Indian rupees (slightly more than two million guilders). The convicts are expected to appeal the decision.
A third suspect, a priest, was released in 2018.
The convicts and the victim operated out of a Catholic church in Knana, Kottajam, Kerala. The woman’s body was found on March 27, 1992 in a well on the church grounds. The police initially suspected a suicide, but Sister Abhaja’s case took several twists and turns in nearly three decades, was rearranged several times and there was suspicion of falsification of evidence.
The court accepted the finding of India’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that Kottoor and Sephi had killed the young woman after the latter accidentally surprised them in an intimate situation in the convent area. Fearing Abhaja would report what happened, Sephi killed the woman with an ax and her body was thrown into the well, writes the MTI.
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