From Suicide To Murder: The Evidence That Nailed Sister Abhaya's Killers 28 Years Later

Twenty eight years after a Catholic nun, Sister Abhaya, was found dead in Kerala, a special CBI court Tuesday?convicted?two persons — Father Thomas Kottoor and Sister Sephy — of murder.

Initially labelled as that of a suicide, the Sister Abhaya case has seen several turns in the two decades since her body was found in a well in Kottayam in 1992 — from witnesses turning hostile to a thief becoming the key to nailing the accused.

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Father Kottoor and Sister Sephy have been found guilty under Section 302 (murder) and Section 201 (destruction of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code. A third accused, Father Jose Poothrikkayil, was acquitted in 2018.

The quantum of punishment will be pronounced Wednesday.

The incident

Sister Abhaya, 21, was found dead in a well of her hostel in Kottayam on 27 March 1992. Local police and the crime branch of the state police had at the time said it was a case of suicide.

However, a year later, the CBI took over the case when Sister Banicassia, Mother Superior, and 67 other nuns from Kottayam's Knanaya Catholic Church that Abhaya was part of,?wrote?to?then chief minister K. Karunakaran claiming the probe wasn’t conducted properly.?

At the time of her death, Abhaya had been a pre-degree student in college run by the Catholic Church,?where Fr Kottoor, who was also secretary to the Bishop, taught psychology.?She had been an inmate of Pious Xth Convent Hostel, which had 123 inmates, including 20 nuns, in 1992 when the incident happened.?Sr Sephy stayed in the same hostel and was its de facto in-charge.

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CBI findings

According to the CBI’s findings, Sr Sephy was having an “affair” with the two other accused, and had been caught by Abhaya on the day of the crime.

This was when had gone to the kitchen to get water from the refrigerator around 4 am. To silence her, Fr Kottoor is believed to have strangled Abhaya while Sr Sephy hit her with an axe. The accused then dumped her body in the well.

Adakka Raja, a thief who had broken into the convent that morning, said he saw both priests there. Raja was the key witness in the case, which saw eight of the 49 witnesses turn hostile during trial.

The CBI case included circumstantial evidence such as a water bottle, a veil, an axe, a basket and Sr Abhaya’s slippers, besides narco analysis and brain mapping of the accused.

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Speaking to The Print, activist Puthenpurackal said he knew Abhaya’s case wasn’t a suicide “from the first day itself”.

“I realised that it was not suicide when you see the scene of occurrence. The kitchen showed signs of a struggle. Her slipper was seen in one place, the other in another place. For Abhaya, who had come to drink some water from the fridge around 4 in the morning, it did not look as a suicide to us,” he explained.

“…I had appealed several times asking the authorities to find the guilty, arrest them and prosecute them,” he added.

The verdict

The judgment of the Thiruvananthapuram CBI court states that Abhaya was attacked on the rear side and middle of her head with an axe.?

Given the nature of the head injury suffered by Abhaya, it is sufficient to cause death, the court noted?forensic expert?Dr Kandaswamy’s deposition. “The only inference possible here is that Abhaya was attacked by the accused with intention to kill her,” the court said.

The location of the murder is significant – a convent, from which male presence is completely and unequivocally banned, it said.

The court noted the abnormal disturbances that occurred in the kitchen work area and in the kitchen wash area of the hostel on the morning of March 27, 1992 and that nun Sephy was alone at the relevant time on the ground floor, and Abhaya’s body was recovered from the well near Sephy’s ground-floor room.

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Judge Sanilkumar said in the order that Kottoor failed to properly explain his presence in the convent during the early hours, and the evidence of Achamma, a help, shows that the compound was guarded by fierce dogs, and that she had closed all the doors the previous night. It demonstrates the nefarious conduct of both accused, the court stated.