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FATHER AND NUN HELD GUILTY FOR THE SISTER ABHAYA MURDER CASE
A CBI court at Thiruvanthampuram on Wednesday put at end to one of the longest-running suits of the murder of Sister Abhaya after 28 years. The dead body of the deceased was found in a well in the premises of St. Pius X Convent, initially, it was concluded as a suicide but on the further intervention of CBI, it was found that the death was homicidal in nature. The court sentenced life imprisonment to the accused 1 and accused 3 Father Thomas M Kottoor and Sister Sephy. The court found that the convicts had murdered the deceased as she had witnessed the intimate exchanges of the convicts and in order to destroy the evidence of their misdeeds threw her body in the well in the convent. The conviction was purely based upon circumstantial evidence as there was not even a single eyewitness of the evidence.
The court has listed about 17 circumstances to lead to the guilt of the convicts. The medical evidence pointed that the deceased had 6 ante-mortem injuries, there were nail scratch marks on either side of her neck, her skull was fractured and also it is proved that her death was caused by head injury and drowning. From the witnesses, it has been found that the kitchen area was found in strangely disturbed condition and there was an axe lying there. It was proved that Sister Abhaya was a living a happy and altruistic life and it was nearly impossible for her to have committed suicide. One of the witnesses Raju who was present inside the convent for the purpose of theft testified that he had seen convict Kottoor along with an unidentified man climbing the staircase at the rear side of the convent building. The court said that it is completely banned for a male to enter a convent and since Kottoor has failed to provide any sufficient explanation for his presence that itself demonstrates the nefarious conduct of the convicts.
Also, it has been found that Sister Sephy had sought medical intervention to portray herself as a virgin. The court noted that there had been continuous systematic and organised efforts to subvert the prosecution case. The court after analysing all the possible circumstances concluded that the evidence on record is sufficient for the chain of circumstances to point towards the guilt of the accused and is inconsistent with the innocence of the accused and the only possibility is that the convicts alone had hit the deceased on the head with a blunt weapon like an axe and inorder to save themselves from legal punishment had thrown her into the well to make it look like a suicide. The court while making the judgement quoted from a Supreme Court precedent-
"Justice would fail not only by unjust conviction of the innocent but also by acquittal of the guilty for unjustified failure to produce available evidence."
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