2 priests, nun held for Sister Abhaya murder

NEW DELHI: Sixteen years after Sister Abhaya was murdered and her body dumped in the well of a Kerala convent, the CBI on Wednesday arrested two Catholic priests and a nun in the case.

The CBI, which has been under pressure to act after 16 years of inactivity in the case, arrested father Jose Putarika, 56, a former Malayalam professor at the Kottayam college where Abhaya studied, and Thomas Kottor, 61, the Diocesan chancellor of the Catholic Church at Kottayam for the murder which took place in 1992. The investigating agency also arrested 45-year-old Sister Seffi, who belonged to the same convent as Abhaya.

The Church, however, sprang to the defence of the priests arrested by the CBI. The Kottayam Diocese of the Church said the latest developments was suspicious.

���In 16 years of investigation, various teams looked into the case and could not find anything,��� a Church press release stated, adding that it was ���surprising that in four days the team got clues leading to the arrests. The arrested are innocent and if a proper investigation is initiated then the real truth would come out.���

The three accused were produced before a Kerala court where their bail plea was turned down. The court also turned down the demand that they be questioned in the presence of their counsel.

The three have been under the scanner for a long time and were even subjected to a narco analysis and polygraph tests last year.

Abhaya, a resident of Pious X Hostel, was murdered and her body dumped in the well of the Kottayam convent on March 27, 1992. She was a second year pre-degree student in BCM college, which belonged to the diocese of Kottayam.

In November, 1996, the CBI came to the conclusion that it was murder. However, it failed to arrest the accused. Till now 13 CBI teams have investigated the case. And 12 earlier teams were unable to take the case forward. CBI joint director Ashok Kumar said the case would be taken to its logical conclusion within 30 days.

The Kerala High Court had taken over the monitoring of the investigation of the Sister Abhaya case in 1993 and has been highly critical of the CBI investigations. The court had rejected three closure reports filed by the CBI. On September 4 this year, the court had directed the CBI Delhi unit to hand over the probe to its Kochi unit.