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.Amid allegations that powerful religious sections were trying to avert the embarrassment of an expose, the locals suspected foulplay and formed an Action Council demanding a proper probe. A series of agitations and petitions later, the state police ordered a Crime Branch probe, which too said she had killed herself. The Action Council, led by civil activist Jomon Puthenpurakkal, got the Kerala High Court to order a CBI probe into the nun’s death.The first CBI team probing the death reported it as a suicide. The probe had too many holes and a second CBI team led by Dy SP Varghese P Thomas was sent to investigate, and reported that the nun was murdered. Pressure soon mounted on Thomas to backtrack, and he resigned from the CBI in a huff seven years before retirement, but after disclosing how the agency’s higher ups were allegedly pressuring him to report the nun’s killing as a suicide. In an unprecedented move, all MPs from Kerala petitioned then CBI director K Vijaya Rama Rao to replace the man who was sent to replace Thomas in the probe, and a new officer took over.The CBI probe, however, still produced no results and the courts were again moved by the Action Council, seeking directions to the agency. The court took to directly looking after the probe progress. The CBI then endorsed Thomas’s findings that the nun was murdered, but claimed it had no hope of finding the killer. It thrice moved the court seeking permission to close investigations, and each time the court slammed the agency and ordered it to probe again, and report to it every three months.
