Updated: December 22, 2020 1:02:55 pm
Sister Abhaya was found dead on March 27, 1992.
A special IWC court in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday found Father Thomas Kottoor and Sister Sephy are guilty in the case of the murder of the Catholic nun Abhaya. Kottoor, 69, and Sephy, 55, were charged under Section 302 (murder) and Section 201 (destruction of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The amount of punishment will be delivered on Wednesday.
The verdict came 28 years after the nun’s body was found in a well in her convent shelter in Kottayam. During the course of the hearing, the HC had allowed the petition for the release of Father Puthrikkayl, the third defendant in the case.
The victim and the accused belong to the Knanaya Catholic Church, based in Kottayam. At the time of her death, Abhaya was an undergraduate student at the university run by the Catholic Church. She had been an inmate at the Pious Xth Convent Hostel, which had 123 inmates, including 20 nuns, in 1992 when the incident occurred.
During the trial, eight of the 49 prosecution witnesses turned hostile. However, the court relied on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of a thief named Adakka Raja. Raja had seen the priests at the shelter, where he had infiltrated in the early hours of March 27, 1992, the day of the incident.
Accusation case: The crux of the CBI case is that Sephy had a clandestine affair with two priests, both teaching at a university in Kottayam. On the day of the incident, Abhaya was preparing for an exam. Her colleague, Sister Shirly, woke her up at 4 am that morning. Then she went into the kitchen to get cold water from the fridge to wash her face and keep her awake. When Abhaya entered the kitchen, she allegedly saw the two priests, Kottoor and Puthrikkayl, and the nun in a compromising position. Fearing that she would reveal the incident, the first defendant, Kottoor, allegedly strangled her while the third defendant, Sephy, allegedly struck her with an ax. Together, they dumped his body into a well within the compound.
Three investigations, conflicting positions: Local police investigated the case the day Abhaya was found dead. One case of unnatural death was registered based on a statement from Sister Leissue, Mother Superior of the Convent. On April 13, the criminal branch of the state police took over the investigation and, on January 30, 1993, presented a final report saying that Abhaya had committed suicide.
The convent of St. Pius X in the Kottayam district, where Sister Abaya was found dead. (Photo expressed)
CBI moved: The CBI resumed the investigation one year after the incident, on March 29, 1993. The investigation was handed over to the central agency based on a complaint filed by Sister Banicassia, Mother Superior, and more than 65 other nuns, to the then Chief Minister. K. Karunakaran. Claiming that Abhaya was killed, they said the case was not being properly investigated and appealed to the CM to entrust the investigation to the CBI.
The CBI registered an FIR saying that it could not conclude whether it was a suicide or homicide case, mainly due to the medical evidence. However, it was reported that “assuming it is a homicide case, every effort was made to determine the identity of the culprits, if any, could have been involved in this tragic incident. However, our prolonged efforts, as indicated in the previous paragraphs, did not yield any fruitful results. “
However, the court of first instance judicial did not accept this report presented by SP CBI AK Ohri.
The agency continued its investigation, this time under the direction of its deputy SP Surinder Paul. He filed a second final report stating that the cause of death was a homicide. Despite the best efforts made during the investigation, the identity of the culprits could not be established, and a request was made to accept the report and treat the crime “as closed without tracing.” The conclusion of “homicide” was concluded mainly on the basis of the medical opinion of three doctors, as opposed to the opinion of Dr. C Radhakrishnan, who performed an autopsy on Abhaya’s body. This report was also not accepted by the court.
As the court rejected the second final report, the IWC continued the investigation under the direction of another officer, RR Sahay. In another final report on August 25, 2005, the IWC stated that “an additional investigation conducted, at the request of the court, has not indicated the involvement of any person in the death of Sister Abhaya” and requested that “the case be treated as closed as untracked ”. The court did not accept the investigation and the investigation continued.
On September 4, 2008, the High Court handed over the investigation to the Kerala unit of the CBI in Kochi. By then, the CBI had approached the judiciary to close the case four times for lack of evidence.
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Arrest of the accused: In early November 2008, the HC handed over the case to the CBI state unit and gave a period of three months to complete the investigation. The new team, led by Dy SP Nandakumaran Nair, had recorded the statement of Sanju P Mathew, who was residing next to the convent when Abhaya died. Sanju, in her statement under Section 164 of the CrPC, said she had seen Kottoor on the convent hostel campus on the night of March 26, 1992, the day before Abhaya was found dead. Based on this statement, on November 19, 2008, the IWC arrested Kottoor, Puthrikkayl and Sephy.
Charge sheet: On July 17, 2009, the CBI filed its charge sheet against the detainees. The special court started the trial last year.
Sister Abhaya, at the time of her death, was an undergraduate student at the university run by the Catholic Church.
Narcoanalysis, a turning point in the investigation: On July 6, 2007, the court ordered the CBI to subject the suspects to drug testing. On August 3, 2007, the agency conducted the tests in Bangalore. But the CBI was unable to proceed as there was no solid evidence left to support the test results.
In August 2008, the CBI informed the HC that no new facts had emerged from the narcoanalysis test carried out on the two priests and the nun, but that it would leave no stone unturned to unravel the mystery surrounding Abhaya’s death and lead to the culprits to the book. . Although the CBI was convinced that Abhaya had been killed, it could not locate the attackers. The copy of the original narcoanalysis CD was delivered to the court.
Narco CD found altered: A team of technical experts from the Center for the Development of Imaging Technology (C-DIT), Thiruvananthapuram, had discovered that the master tapes of the narco-analysis tests, carried out on the three people before their arrest, had been tampered with. The 32-minute, 50-second CD of the Kottoor narcoanalysis was released in 30 locations. Puthrukkaayil’s CD (40 minutes, 55 seconds) was released in 19 locations, while Sister Sephy’s 18-minute, 42-second CD was released in 23 locations. C-DIT was asked to investigate the narco CDs at the behest of the CJM court in Kochi, which has been monitoring the investigation.
Narco-analysis not used as evidence: In December last year, the HC ruled that the results of the narcoanalysis and the brain mapping process carried out on the accused cannot be used as evidence. The court held that the results of such scientific tests, even if carried out with the consent of the accused, can only be used to prove the discovery of facts in accordance with article 27 of the Indian Evidence Act.
Therefore, the first instance court did not examine doctors N Krishnaveni and Pravin Parvathappa, from CFSL, Bengaluru, who had carried out the narcoanalysis tests. The court noted that the petitioners had not yet been charged at the time of the evidence.
Circumstantial evidence on which CBI relied: The most crucial evidence on which the CBI relied had been the uproar in the kitchen. The water bottle had fallen near the fridge with the water dripping, the veil was found under the exit door, which was found closed from the outside – the latches on the inside were open – an ax and a basket had fallen, two Abhaya slippers were found in different places in the kitchen, and together, the area exhibited an appearance of having had a fight inside. But there was no blood on the scene.
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