A senior Catholic nun, who has charged latin Catholic Bishop Franco Mulakkal of the Jalandhar Diocese with raping her several times inside her convent, has complained to police that there had been attempts to endanger the life of her and other nuns who were supporting her, bringing further disrepute and embarrassment to the beleaguered Catholic Church.
The nun, now 47, said in the complaint she lodged with police at Kuravilangad in Kottayam district on Tuesday that the brother of a priest who was a confidant of the Bishop had been putting pressure on an Assam native employed with her convent to disconnect the brake system and damage the tyre tube valve of a two-wheeler the nuns had been using.
According to the complaint, it was one Thomas Chittuparambil, reportedly the brother of Fr lawrence Chittuparambil, a priest with the Jalandhar Diocese and allegedly the person in charge of a construction company owned by the diocese, who had instructed the migrant worker to work on the scooter in order to endanger the lives of the rape victim and her supporters.
Thomas had been putting pressure on the migrant worker to monitor her movements and those of her supporters and to work on the scooter for endangering their lives, the nun said in the complaint. They had decided to approach the police after the migrant worker himself had revealed Thomas’s plot on Tuesday morning.
The complaint also said that Thomas used to visit the nun’s convent, St Francis Mission Home at Kuravilangad, earlier to influence the worker but began communicating with him later over the phone after the convent was brought under police guard in the context of the investigation into the nun’s rape charge against Bishop Mulakkal.
The worker, who had repeatedly told Thomas that he could not do anything that could endanger the lives of the nuns, had disclosed the conspiracy to them after the alleged pressure from Thomas became unbearable. He has reportedly informed them that he is afraid of Thomas and that it is impossible for him to continue in the job.
The Jalandhar diocese has reportedly clarified that it had nothing to do with the alleged bid to endanger the nun and her colleagues. It also said the nun had raised the charge in order to attract media attention. “This is yet another screenplay from the nun. Why should the Bishop be worried about itij” a Kochi-based supporter of the Bishop asked.
The new complaint from the nun about the alleged plot to endanger to nun and her colleagues has come at a time when the Kerala Police’s investigation into her rape charge against Bishop Mulakkal is in the final stage. The police have already completed collecting evidences and statements in the case and have questioned the Bishop.
A brother of the victim had earlier claimed that the Bishop had through a mediator promised Rs 5 crore to withdraw the rape case against the Bishop, later, Fr James Aerthayil, a senior Catholic priest, had promised that a ten-acre plot could be bought and new convent could be built in it for the nun and her colleagues if they were prepared to give up their legal battle.
The senior nun, a member of the Missionaries of Jesus congregation that came under Bishop Mulakkal’s diocese, had in June complained to the police that he had sexually assaulted her 13 times between 2014 and 2016 at Kuravilangad.
According to her, she had approached the police after all her efforts to get justice from the Church authorities failed. She said that she had taken her complaint to all Church authorities including the vicar of the local parish, the Bishop of her diocese, the head of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, the Vatican’s envoy in India and The Vatican itself.
Rejecting her charge, the Bishop claimed that the case against him was nothing but an act of revenge for initiating action against her on the basis of a woman’s complaint that the nun had a relationship with her husband. However, this woman later told the police that there was no such relationship and that she had made the complaint due to some misunderstanding.