Pressure is said to be mounting from superior officials and political bosses on a special probe team of the Kerala Police to avoid the arrest of Bishop Franco Mulakkal (54) of the Jalandhar latin Catholic Diocese who is accused of raping a senior nun several times. However, the investigators are determined to go ahead with their plan to arrest him.
The probe team headed by K Subhash, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Vaikom, Kottayam, is likely to inform a high-level meeting to be held over the case on Monday that there was no way to avoid the Bishop’s arrest. They have already collected irrefutable evidences against him and have found that almost all the statements he has given them are false.
The alleged differences between the investigators and their superiors and political bosses have reportedly worsened the situation so much that they may express their readiness to withdraw from the investigation. In this sense, the high-level police meeting on Monday at Kottayam will be crucial for the nun rape case.
Reports from Jalandhar said that the Bishop was going ahead with his priestly activities and celebrations showing no worries over the case against him or the progress the investigation team has made in it and that this suggested that he had received firm assurance from reliable quarters that he would not be arrested.
Such uncertainties have come up just when the investigators are preparing to arrest the Bishop from Jalandhar or by summoning him to Kottayam. The probe team had questioned the Bishop at the Jalandhar Diocese’s headquarters on August 13. According to sources, the probe has reached its final stage and the only significant step remaining is the Bishop’s arrest.
According to sources, the probe team is suspecting that crucial secret information concerning the nun rape case are being leaked to the associates of Bishop Mulakkal and that this is being done by people from the Police Department itself. This also might come up at the high-level police meeting on Monday, they said.
Meanwhile, a report on Sunday said that the probe team members were facing threat to their lives in connection with the case. It said there was an attempt the other day to hit a police vehicle in which DySP Subhash and Circle Inspector Mohandas were travelling using a truck at Thanneermukkom in Alappuzha district.
It is also reported that the investigators were offered huge amounts of money to hush up the case. Earlier, the victim’s brother had allegedly been offered Rs 5 crore to drop the case against the Bishop. A senior Catholic priest had a few weeks ago offered ten acres of land and a new convent to the victim and some other nuns who supported her for dropping the case.
The sex scandal rocking the Catholic Church presently erupted in June after the Catholic nun (now 47) approached the Superintendent of Police, Kottayam seeking action against Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who according to her, had raped her several times in two years in the premises of her convent, St Francis Mission Home Kuravilangad in Kottayam district.
According to the nun’s complaint and her statements to the police and before a Magistrate under Section 164 of the CrPC, Bishop Mulakkal had raped her using threats and force 13 times between 2014 and 2016 at a guest house attached to her convent. The Bishop had raped her first on May 5, 2014 when he visited Kerala for a church programme in Thrissur, she said.
Bishop Mulakkal rejected the charge saying that the nun was trying to trap him in a sex scandal as an act of revenge for taking action against her over a complaint from a woman who said her husband and the nun had an illicit relationship. However, this woman had later told the police that there was no such relationship between her husband and the nun.
The nun reiterated her charges against the Bishop when the probe team recorded her statement for a third time the other day. She said the reason for the delay in approaching the police with the complaint against the Bishop was her hope to get justice from the Church as she had petitioned all relevant authorities in it.
The investigators have found that there are several contradictions in the statements given to them by the Bishop in the case. He had claimed that he was not at the nun’s convent on May 5, 2014, the day the victim had said he had raped her for the first time and that he was at a convent in Thodupuzha, Idukki on that day but the police have confirmed that this claim is false.