The mystery behind the 15-year-old suspected rape-cum-murder of Sister Abhaya, a young nun in her convent at Kottayam, that had severely dented the CBI’s image in Kerala, may be headed for a sensational solution next fortnight. The CBI is reportedly preparing to book a senior priest holding an important church position.

The CBI, which thrice tried to close the case pleading it could not find the killer, only to have the court to throw the case back at it each time ordering re-investigation, submitted the findings of a narco analysis that it got done on a couple of male priests and two nuns who were reportedly connected to the nun’s death.

Sources say the narco test report, still under wraps at the Kerala High Court and the court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate trying the case, has one of the priests owning up that Abhaya was bludgeoned and thrown into the convent’s well in the morning hours. This was after she left her room to draw water from the well, and walked into a priest and a nun in the dark, in a situation not in keeping with priesthood.

While adding that narco test results can at best be only corroborative evidence, the sources claimed the CBI now has enough evidence otherwise to go for the arrests, likely over the next few days. The CBI is expected to make its interim report on the case’s progress to the court on June 4 its final one, they added.

Sister Abhaya was an 18-year-old nun belonging to the Catholic Diocese of Kottayam, staying at the church-run St Pius X convent there. Her body was found in the convent well on March 27, 1992 and there was no convincing explanation — the police promptly wrote it off as a suicide.

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