Updated: December 23, 2020 8:20:34 pm
On March 27, 1992, Sister Abhaya was found dead at the St. Pius X Convent in the Kottayam district of Kerala. (Express photo)
A special IWC court in Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday sentenced a priest and a nun to life imprisonment for the murder of Sister Abhaya in Kottayam in 1992. The court also fined Father Thomas Kottoor and his wife 5 lakh rupees each. Sister Sephy, the first and third. defendants in the case, respectively, who were found guilty on Tuesday. The court also awarded Father Kottoor an additional life sentence and imposed a fine of 1 lakh rupees. The two have also been sentenced to seven years in prison and a fine of Rs 50,000 each. All sentences will run at the same time.
After 28 years of waiting, the court found the two guilty of murdering sister Abhaya, a 19-year-old Catholic nun, and dumped her body in the well of the Pius X convent in Kottayam on March 27, 1992. The prosecution had alleged that Sister Abhaya, after waking up early in the morning, had found the first and the third accused along with another priest, who was released by a court, in a compromising situation. Fearing they would be discovered before the church, which has strict celibacy rules for priests and nuns, the convicts killed Sister Abhaya and threw her body into the well.
Father Kottoor was found guilty under Sections 302 (murder), 201 (destruction of evidence) and 459 (causing serious damage during illegal entry) of the IPC. Sister Sephy had been found guilty under Sections 302 and 201 of the IPC.
The prosecution had advocated the harshest punishment for both defendants, claiming that the case falls into the category of ‘rarest of the rare’. However, the defense, citing the defendants’ age and health problems, called for a lighter punishment. Father Kottoor reportedly suffers from an advanced stage of cancer, while Sister Sephy has diabetes and a condition related to weakening of the bones.
While Father Kottoor is likely to suffer his punishment in Poojapura Central Jail, Sister Sephy is most likely incarcerated in Attakulangara Women’s Prison. Both had undergone a preliminary medical examination yesterday after their conviction in the case.
Sister Abhaya’s case was one of the longest-running and highest-profile murder mysteries in Kerala, with multiple twists and turns. The defendants were detained by the IWC in November 2008, more than 16 years after the nun’s death. And during the trial, eight of the 49 prosecution witnesses, most of them close to the Church, turned hostile.
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