Abhaya case: 2 priests, nun held

The arrested persons — Fr Thomas M Kottor, 51, Fr Jose Pithrukkayil, 56, and Sister Steffy, 45 — were produced before the Kochi Chief Judicial Magistrate Court, which remanded them for custodial interrogation for 14 days.

The arrest has served as a major morale booster for the premier investigating agency, which had approached the court four times in the past to close the case for want of evidence.

The three arrested had been under a cloud of suspicion after the CBI subjected them to narcoanalysis test in Bangalore in September 2007. But the CBI could not proceed any further as no hard evidence was left to substantiate the results of the test. Early this month, the CBI handed over the case to its Kochi unit at the behest of the court, which allotted it a period of three months for completing the probe.

Earlier, during the narcoanalysis, one of the priests had confessed that Abhaya was hit with a sharp object. Fearing that she was dead, the priests threw her into the convent well in the morning. The provocation for the attack was that Abhaya had seen a priest and a nun in a comprising position in the convent kitchen, where she had gone to drink water. The first information report prepared by the local police had suggested evidence of a minor scuffle near the well.

According to sources, the CBI would have a tough task ahead as the local and Crime Branch police had destroyed all evidence in the case. Besides, forensic reports were found to be tampered with at several places. The CBI would also have to explain why its previous teams had not recorded the statements of Sanju. CBI Joint Director Ashok Kumar said at a press conference that the agency would try its best to solve the case.

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