Nun rape case: Police may arrest Bishop Mulakkal soon

The Kerala Police are preparing to arrest Bishop Franco Mulakkal of the Latin Catholic Church’s Jalandhar Diocese in the case pertaining to the alleged rape of a senior nun by the Bishop several times between 2014 and 2016. They may soon leave for Punjab to question him.

The police team is said to have received an Intelligence report saying law and order problems could occur if the Bishop is arrested. In this situation, the police may avoid immediate arrest and go for it only after collecting all possible evidences and witness statements.

However, sources in the police said the reports on the pressure on them were only rumours and they would do “whatever is to be done” in the case. Officers from the police team probing the case are likely to leave for Jalandhar to question Bishop Mulakkal once they complete the process of collecting statements and evidences.

According to the senior nun, now 48, the Bishop had raped her 13 times between 2014 and 2016. He had abused her sexually for the first time on May 5, 2014 at a guest house attached to her convent at Kuravilangad in Kottayam district when he had visited Kerala for attending a Church programme, she had said in her statement to the police.

The nun, who had served under the Jalandhar Bishop for nine years earlier, repeated these charges against the Bishop in her statement to the investigators as well as in her statement recorded before a Magistrate. The police have found that the Bishop had been in Kerala on the dates on which the nun said she was sexually assaulted by him at Kuravilangad.

A police team on Thursday visited a convent in Kannur that controlled by the Jalandhar Diocese in order to find out whether he had visited these convents during his Kerala visits. They have collected the visitors’ records from the convent. The investigators had earlier collected statements of the nuns at the convent in Kuravilangad and also of the relatives of the victim.

Police sources said that the investigators had got “solid evidences” that might warrant his arrest.  The State police have reportedly begun efforts to seek the assistance of the Punjab Police for arresting the Bishop in the context of the Intelligence reports warning about the possibility of law and order problems.

Suspecting that Bishop Mulakkal, a person with connections in foreign countries, especially in The Vatican, may try to flee India for The Vatican, the State police have reportedly requested the Union Civil aviation Department to take steps for monitoring the main airports in order to prevent him from leaving the country.

“I heard about the allegation that I am planning to flee India for Vatican. There is no truth in it. I am not going anywhere,” the Bishop told a Kerala television channel. “I have made it clear from the very beginning of this case that I will cooperate with the investigators totally. I am not even trying to seek anticipatory bail because I know that I am innocent,” he said in Jalandhar.

Claiming that the charge against him is baseless and mysterious, the Bishop said, “I am unable to understand why she has decided to level such a charge at this point.” He said that there were no problems between them in 2014, the year in which she said he had raped her. They had travelled and had attended

Church-related programmes together several times during this period, he said.