May move for polygraph tests on suspects

The State police Crime Branch (CB) has prepared separate questionnaires to interrogate four Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church clergymen accused of having blackmailed a woman into sexual submission by threatening to reveal her confessional secrets.

Officials said they had based the set of questions mainly on the woman’s sworn statement, her husband’s complaint and other evidence collected by the agency. They might also move the court to put the suspects through a polygraph test if required.

The CB probe had unfolded fast across the State after the scandal that rocked the church erupted in the public domain last month.

The agency’s case was that one of the accused had raped the woman when she was a minor in 1999. At the time, the main accused had not joined the priestly order or taken his vows. He had promised the woman his hand in marriage and then retracted.

Investigators said the second instalment of the crime began last year when the main accused attempted to resurrect his relationship with the victim, who had by then married and mothered two children. The agency’s case was that the accused, by now a middle-ranking priest and trained family counsellor, coerced her into a non-consensual sexual relationship. Investigators said the distraught woman approached other priests with her plight and they took sexual advantage of her over a period of two years.

An official said one of the suspects, a priest of the order based in New Delhi, often joined the victim in a five-star hotel in Kochi. He allegedly pressurised her into stealing gold from a relative’s house to pay for the room. The case came to light when her husband stumbled on the receipts e-mailed to her from the hotel.

The CB has submitted the hotel records as evidence in the case. It has also engaged psychologists and social workers to counsel the victim and cushion her trauma,

The agency has also sought documents relating to the Church’s internal inquiry into the controversy to investigate whether there had been any attempt to cover up the sexual assault or report the rape to the authorities. The agency has indicted the priests for rape and blackmail.