The CBI is in a piquant state over its investigation into the Abhaya murder case,with the two judges in the Kerala High Court bench hearing the case taking conflicting positions.
Granting bail to the accused priests and the nun last week,Justice K Hema had said the investigation should go on only under the strict supervision of a competent,senior officer. Questioning all the points raised by the CBI to build its case,she asked: Why was the suicide of Sister Abhaya kept a secret?
On the other hand,Justice R Basant,who heard a petition from Abhayas father seeking an end to the deadlock in the investigation,on Monday said the probe should not be suspended as society has every right to know who murdered the nun.
He directed the CBI to file a petition in the high court to clear the impasse in the wake of adverse observations of the bench of Justice Hema,which granted bail to the accused. Weeks back,Basant had remarked that the case could be solved within 16 minutes if the Church cooperated with the probe.
The media too have joined the fray,deploring the observations of Justice Hema against them. She had said that judges are not candles to melt away in the heat of a threat,as expressed in media headlines.
The public do know what the case records bear. By sustained brainwashing,they may not even accept any judicial pronouncements which may run contrary to what they were made to believe so far. The court can go by only facts. Much has been done by the media in the last 16 years without knowing what the 24 volumes of the case diary contain, she said.
Justice Hema had questioned the authenticity of the entire case,picking up several lapses on the part of the CBI. The alleged assault on Abhaya by the arrested three was not clear from the case diary or even from the narco-analysis report,she said. If reliance is placed on edited,tampered CDs,the investigating agency and the court would go wrong in making conclusions.
Story continues below this ad
Hema also said brain fingerprinting and polygraph tests were negative on the involvement of the accused in the crime. The investigators have to find out whether a better and clear picture can be obtained by exploring the details in the scientific study. If indications in the above scientific reports are true,a larger question may arise why the suicide was kept secret?
She had also given a clean chit to retired police inspector V V Augustine,whom the CBI had zeroed in on for tampering evidence and depicting the death as a suicide. Augustine died a month back,leaving a note that the CBI had been harassing him.
The high court said details would reveal that Augustine had recorded that Abhaya could not have committed suicide. His report said: Abhaya would have witnessed something objectionable on that morning and somebody who would have felt that he was identified by her would have done something to cause her death and dumped her body in the well. This fact cannot be denied.
The court noted that the CBI did not explain why it was making allegations contrary to the above record. It also made the point that while the CBI submitted that the court should not reveal the case diary,it had evoked Section 172 of the CrPC to facilitate perusal of the diary.
Story continues below this ad
While the CBI had argued that one of the accused,Steffy,had undergone hymnoplasty abroad to get her hymen restored,the court said that she had not gone out of the country her entire life.
4 min read
