Eight days after Father Mathew Nellickel, vicar-general of the Tezpur Diocese in Northern Assam was found murdered in his bedroom in the Bishop House at Tezpur, the police have pinned down senior church official Father Thomas Ekka as prime suspect in the case. The latter apparently bore a grudge as Father Nellickel was elevated to vicar-general.Father Thomas Ekka, who runs the Catholic Church at Kowpatti in Darrang district, about 30 km from Tezpur, was arrested yesterday and has been remanded in police custody for 10 days. A case has been registered against him under Section 302 of the IPC.Tezpur town police station officer-in-charge inspector Bipin Rajbangshi said Father Ekka was arrested following ‘‘hard evidence’’ that he was involved in the gruesome murder of 65-year-old Father Nellickel. Police said the 59-year-old clergyman from Darrang, along with another priest Father Prakash of Nagaon, had dined with the vicar-general in the Tezpur Diocese on September 2. While Father Prakash left for Nagaon soon afterwards, Father Ekka stayed back in the diocese.The next morning, he left for Kowpatti around 9.45 am. Within hours, Tezpur police found the vicar-general’s body in his room in a pool of blood, with multiple injuries on the head. Police had been suspecting the hand of an insider as there were no signs of forced entry in the complex. The Bishop House, which is part of the Don Bosco complex, is hemmed in by high walls; the gates are guarded at all times of the day.‘‘When we zeroed in on Father Ekka after having found that he had dined and stayed back in the Bishop’s House the previous night, a thorough search revealed that at least one of his dresses, which he is believed to have worn on September 2, bore blood stains,’’ Inspector Rajbangshi said.Father Ekka, on his return to Kowpatti, had even tried to remove the blood stains from his dress by washing them repeatedly, police said. His clothes, fingerprints and other items collected from the scene of crime have been been dispatched to the Forensic Science Laboratory in Guwahati for analysis.Sources said Father Ekka was not on good terms with Father Nellickel. Their relationship had particularly soured after Ekka was removed from Tezpur Don Bosco about two years ago. Father Nellickel was elevated to the post of vicar-general in June. The 65-year-old, from Pala in Kottayam district in Kerala, had come to the North-East when he was only 15. He had served in several capacities, including parish priest of Mangaldoi and Rowta, chancellor of the Tezpur diocese and principal of the Tezpur Don Bosco School. His body was cremated in the Tezpur Diocese compound yesterday in the presence of several senior Catholic Church functionaries.
