The State Police Crime Branch has said it would call for church records relating to the internal inquiry conducted by the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church into the allegation that five of its clergymen had taken sexual advantage of a member of the laity after threatening to reveal the woman’s confessional secrets publicly.
S. Sreejith, Inspector General of Police, Crime Branch, on Tuesday visited the Church’s headquarters at Devalokam in Kottayam and interacted with senior members of the order. The agency said it saw a discrepancy between the statements given by the woman to Church authorities and later to the police. In her statement to the inquiry commission constituted by the Church, the woman had denied her husband’s allegation that the accused priests had blackmailed her into sexual submission.
However, she later retracted her statement and told the CB that the accused had repeatedly coerced her into having sex with them.
The Crime Branch had on Monday indicted the five priests for rape, blackmail and outraging the modesty of a woman by the survivor’s statement. The charges carry minimum 10 years of rigorous imprisonment or a life sentence, in extreme cases.
Sworn statement
On Tuesday, the agency told a magistrate court in Thiruvalla that the alleged survivor was willing to testify on her own and requested that the court record her sworn statement under Section 164 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The Crime Branch has impounded as evidence a tranche of documents relating to the case. They include e-mail communications, credit card payment records for hotel rooms, travel bills, Internet chat records and audio recordings of potentially incriminating telephone conversations.
The agency has identified at least one hotel the woman was allegedly forced to spend time with the accused.
Investigators said the woman’s statement carried massive weight in a rape case under Section 145 of the amended Indian Evidence Act and they just had to tie up loose ends to prove the presence of the accused and the survivor at the suspected scenes of crime.