A special CBI court in Kerala on Wednesday sentenced a Catholic priest and a nun who were found guilty of murdering Sister Abhaya, a teenaged nun, to life terms, ending a legal battle that dragged for close to three decades.
The court sentenced Father Thomas Kottoor, 73, to life in jail for murder and trespass to commit a punishable offence and another seven years for destroying evidence.
Sister Sephy, 57, was handed the life term for murder and another seven years in jail for destroying evidence.
Each of them was slapped with a penalty of Rs 5 lakh under IPC Section 302 (murder) and Rs 50,000 each under IPC Section 201 (destruction of evidence).
Kottoor was slapped with an additional fine of Rs 1 lakh for house trespass to commit a crime punishable with death (IPC Section 449).
Both of them will serve the terms concurrently.
CBI special judge K. Sanil Kumar had on Tuesday found Kottoor and Sephy guilty of murdering Sister Abhaya, 19, at St Pious X Convent in Kottayam on March 27, 1992.
The prosecution had appealed for the maximum possible punishment for both of them, while the defence had sought to consider the fact that Kottoor is a cancer patient. Sephy had told the court that she had aged parents to look after and pleaded for the minimum sentence.
A student of Class XII, Abhaya had woken up at 4am to prepare for an exam and gone to fetch water from the kitchen. She is believed to have seen Sephy, Kottoor and Father Jose Poothrukkayil in a compromising position.
Alarmed by the discovery of their act, Kottoor strangled Abhaya while Sephy hit her on the head with a hand axe that left a deep wound confirmed by the autopsy. They then dumped Abhaya in the convent well even though she was alive.
Poothrukkayil was discharged from the case in 2018 for want of evidence.
Jomon Puthenpurackal, a rights activist who floated the Abhaya Case Action Council to fight for the nun who belonged to a poor family, heaved a sigh of relief after the sentence.
“My life’s goal stands completed today. I have no more desires left,” Puthenpurackal told reporters outside the court in Thiruvananthapuram.
“This sentence is the victory of all those who wanted justice for her (Abhaya). This judgment will help restore confidence in the courts at a time when people have been losing faith in the judiciary.”
Varghese P. Thomas, the deputy superintendent of the CBI and the investigating officer who had in 1993 reported the crime as a clear case of murder, said he now wanted the discharged priest to be brought to book.
“The CBI has already filed a review petition against him (Poothrukkayil).… I am of the firm belief that even he will get the punishment he deserves,” said Thomas, who had quit the service 10 years ahead of retirement due to alleged pressure from superiors who wanted him to write the case off as suicide.
After the police and the crime branch initially reported it as death by suicide, even the CBI had filed three closure reports citing lack of evidence to prove otherwise before evidence unearthed by Thomas helped in the prosecution. A court had ordered the reopening of the case in 2008.
