Kerala Catholic Bishop Arrested over Nun's Rape

After three days of questioning, the Kerala Police on Friday arrested Bishop Franco Mulakkal, who heads the Latin Catholic Diocese in Jalandhar and has been accused of repeatedly raping a nun. This is the first time in the country that a bishop has been arrested for rape.

He was taken for medical examination and will be produced before a court on Saturday.

Addressing reporters in Kochi on Friday night, after Mulakkal was taken out from the Crime Branch office where he was questioned, Kottayam Superintendent of Police Hari Sankar said all paper work for the arrest has been completed.

“He has been charged for illegal confinement, rape, unnatural sex and criminal intimidation. The arrest was made on the grounds of reasonable suspicion, which is enough for effecting an arrest. He was also given reasonable time to defend himself.”

 “The arrest has come after analysing all the evidences collected in the past two months of probe. The conspiracy angle that came out has also been looked into,” said Hari Sankar.

He added, “The arrest came after multi-level discussions and we will be looking into more evidences. Also, the investigation officer will look into the case if there were more people involved.”

Mulakkal was taken to the Tripunithura Taluk Hospital for the medical examination. From there, he was taken in a police vehicle to Kottayam, about 60 km away.

The arrest came after the bishop was questioned for three consecutive days at the Crime Branch office near Tripunithura. Mulakkal has been accused of repeatedly sexually abusing the nun between 2014 and 2016. She had raised her complaint against the Bishop in June.

The news of his arrest was received with loud slogans at a venue where five nuns have been on an indefinite protest along with the public for the past 14 days demanding his arrest.

“We still can't believe that he has been arrested. We are overjoyed,” exclaimed a nun. Another nun said, “We are extremely happy. This could happen only because we got the support of public and also the media.”

The nuns in Kochi protesting for the past 14 days demanding his arrest had also secured widespread support from civil society groups.

The arrest became a certainty on Friday morning when a police official came to the victim, who has been staying at a convent near Kottayam, to take statements for the seventh time since she had first raised the issue in June. The official took about half an hour and passed on the outcome to the investigation officer who was questioning the bishop.

Like the past two days, on Friday too, the bishop accompanied by his counsel and a few priests arrived for the questioning under heavy police escort around 10.45 a.m.

Now with the bishop's arrest, his anticipatory bail plea filed before the Ke

rala High Court on September 25 has turned infructuous. An FIR has been registered against the bishop and a 114 page detailed statement was taken from the nun and other inmates of the convent. 

Hari Sankar, early on Friday, had met Inspector General of Police Vijay Sakhre, who is heading the probe team.

As Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is in the US for medical treatment, Industries Minister E.P. Jayarajan, the de facto Chief Minister, had earlier said that the probe was progressing in the right direction. “The government has always been with the victim and whosoever does a wrong, the wrongdoer will be taken to task," he had remarked.

The arrest of the bishop brings forth a historic beginning for nuns as this is the first time such an arrest has been made. The arrest also comes at a very crucial juncture when the nuns’ protests had gathered so much heat that it had exposed several issues within the Church in India, including several more nuns coming out with complaints of sexual harassment and abuse. 

Read more: Nuns’ Protest in Kerala Exposes Several Ruptures within the Church