The murder of Father KJ Thomas, Rector of the St. Peter's Pontifical Seminary in Bengaluru, has taken another twist with the police naming four more Catholic priests as accused in an additional chargesheet filed before the court.

With this, the number of Catholic priests involved in the murder has risen to eight. Thomas was murdered on March 31, 2013.

The police have named Father I Anthappa, Father Chesara, Father A Thomas, and Father Anbu John as the prime accused in the chargesheet filed before the designated court on November 26. In addition to these four priests, the police named three others as the conspirators in the case. All the seven accused, who are known critics of the Archbishop of Bengaluru, have now applied for anticipatory bail fearing arrest after the court issued non-bailable warrants against them. The police are likely to arrest them later this week.

The filing of the second chargesheet has brought an end the two-year-old probe into the murder of Father Thomas. He was found dead on the Seminary campus and fingers were pointed at his rivals within the institution.

The police had a tough time cracking the case in the absence of any conclusive evidence. They took over 100 people into custody for questioning. The second chargesheet runs into more than 10,000 pages with the police examining 127 witnesses.

Father Thomas was murdered allegedly because of an internal rivalry in the Seminary, particularly over the control of the sprawling campus in Malleshwaram in west Bengaluru. He had reportedly opposed handing over a portion of the Seminary land to real estate developers and consequently earned the ire of his colleagues.

According to the police, more than a dozen people from various Catholic institutions allegedly conspired to kill him. After a year-long probe, the Bengaluru police named Father Elias Daniel, Father William Patrick and trainee priest Peter as the prime accused in its chargesheet filed on June 17, 2014.

According to the police, the accused planned to eliminate Father Thomas during Easter in 2013, as a majority of the students and staff were on leave. In the chargesheet, the police said Father Elias, Father William and Peter entered the Seminary office on the night of March 31, 2013, armed with weapons. When they were stealing the Seminary ownership documents, Father Thomas confronted them resulting in a fatal assault on him.