The Kerala High Court on Thursday ordered a follow-up investigation into the destruction of evidences in the 21-year-old sensational case pertaining to the murder of Sr Abhaya, a 19-year-old nun belonging to the powerful Knanaya Catholic Church.
The court asked the CBI, which had probed the nun’s death, to submit the probe report within three months and ordered stoppage of the trial proceedings going on the in the case at the Special CBI Court in Thiruvananthapuram during that time.
The High Court issued the order on the basis of a petition submitted by KT Michael, former Superintendent of Police, Crime Branch of the Kerala Police, who was in the charge of the investigation into the nun’s death initially. Sr Abhaya was found dead on the morning of March 27, 1992 in the well of the St Pius X Convent in Kottayam where she was an inmate.
Michael said in the petition that a follow-up probe was necessary as several evidences the investigators had depended on in the initial stages had been lost after the CBI took over the probe. These evidences had been handed over to the central probe agency when it had entered the scene but these had gone missing in the primary stage of the probe, he said.
The court ordered investigation into this aspect and asked the agency to find out whether there was a conspiracy in the missing of these evidences. The evidences, including the dress found on the body of the nun when it was recovered from the well, are said to have gone missing from the Sub-Judicial Magistrate Court in Kottayam where these had been kept.
The High Court also asked the central probe agency to take back the chargesheet submitted in the Special CBI Court in Thiruvananthapuram but made it clear that this was only for the purpose of the reinvestigation. It also proposed that the trial should be carried out on the basis of the report of the reinvestigation.
Welcoming the High Court order for reinvestigation, Sr Abhaya’s father Thomas Aikkarakkunnel alleged that it was Michael himself who had destroyed the nun’s dress and diary. Thomas added that he would consider approaching the Supreme Court after getting a copy of the High Court order.
The Kerala Police and its Crime Branch which probed the death of Sr Abhaya initially had come to the conclusion that it was a case of suicide. But the CBI which took over the probe later concluded that the nun had been murdered but filed an application in the High Court stating that the case had to be closed as no evidence was available.
However, the court ordered the CBI to probe the case again in the context of fresh petitions. Following this, the central agency arrested senior priests Fr Jose Puthrukayil and Fr Thomas M Kottoor and senior nun Sr Seffi of the Knanaya Catholic Church on November 19, 2008, sixteen years after the incident.
According to the CBI, the two priests and the nun had thrown Sr Abhaya, then preparing for her pre-degree examinations, in the well of the convent on the night of March 26-27, 1992 after striking her at the back of the head with a blunt object as she had seen them in compromising postures in a dark room in the rear of the convent.