india

Updated: Feb 19, 2019 23:30 IST

The Kerala police said Tuesday that they have registered a case against a convent in Muvattupuzha in Ernakulam district after a nun, a key witness in the sexual assault case against former Jalandhar bishop Franco Mulakkal, alleged that she was illegally confined and tortured for deposing against him.

The complaint surfaced after the nun’s brother lodged a missing person’s report with the police saying his sister Lisy Vadakkayil hadn’t be seen for at least two months, police said. Police traced her to a convent in Muvattupuzha, run by the Franciscan Clarist Congregation. The 53-year-old nun later told the police that she was originally transferred from Muvattupuzha to a convent in Vijayawada and confined in a room for more than a month. She was moved to the convent in Muvattupuzha when she fell ill, but not allowed to interact with relatives and others. Sister Lisy is among the first to depose against the bishop and is also a key witness in the case.

In her complaint, she said she was tortured at the convent In Vijayawada and forced to retract her statement in the Franco case. She also alleged convent authorities threatened to brand her insane and admit her to a mental asylum if she did not retract her statement against the bishop. “Based on her statement, we have registered a case against the [Ernakulam] convent. We will also examine the role of the convent in Vijayawada. We sent her with her brother as she was scared to go back to the convent,” said a senior police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A spokesman for the Franciscan Clarist Congregation, which comes under the Catholic Church, denied any ill-treatment of Sister Lisy at the convent and claimed the nun made up the story as an excuse for not taking up a posting in Vijayawada.

The church’s treatment of the nun is of a piece with how it has dealt with both the sexual assault survivor and the other nuns who spoke out for her.

In June last year, the survivor, then 43, complained to the police that Mulakkal raped her 13 times between 2014 and 2016. When the police failed to arrest him, five other nuns staged a sit-in protest in Kochi. Later a special investigation team was set up and it arrested the influential bishop in September after several rounds of questioning. After spending three weeks in judicial custody, Mulakkal was released on bail.

The five nuns who stood by the victim alleged that there have been many attempts to intimidate and transfer them out of Kerala. The victim and five nuns are now confined at their convent in Kuravilangad in Kottayam. Father Kuriakose Kattuthara, 62, who was another witness in the Franco Mulakkal case, was found dead in Jalandhar under mysterious circumstances last year.

Prosecutors said they will examine the latest development and explore possibilities to cancel the bail granted to the deposed bishop. Save Our Sisters, a collective formed in the wake of this case, has sought cancellation of Franco Mulakkal’s bail saying he is trying to intimidate witnesses in the case.

“We want the public prosecutor to move a fresh plea to cancel his bail.,” a spokesperson of SOS said on Tuesday.