If the first two days of interrogation of Bishop Franco Mulakkal on charge of raping a nun was devoid of much drama, except what the visual media conjured up out of sheer speculation, the third and final day on Friday more than made up for it as it progressed towards the denouement like a spiced-up suspense thriller.
While channels contributed to the drama on the strength of unconfirmed reports, the police proved an able foe by choosing neither to confirm or deny but leaving it till late in the evening.
The initial report about the “arrest” was flashed by a news channel at 1.30 p.m. leaving the rest of the reporters in frenzy. A few reporters rushed back to the Crime Branch office where the bishop was being interrogated only to realise that it was only a rumour. The media remained in a heightened ‘state of alert’ since then even as some other channels came up with their own reports of the “arrest,” which was yet to be confirmed by the investigating team.
After a brief period, the excitement was rekindled around 4.45 p.m. when a group of police personnel took position outside the entrance of the CB office and asked the waiting media to make way for a vehicle giving the impression that the wait for the conclusion of the interrogation and the arrest was imminent.
Nothing happened for the next more than an hour. Then around 6 p.m. came reports that the bishop’s arrest was indeed recorded and the by-now-familiar media frenzy followed, marked by the cacophony of reporters giving live reports and taking public opinion from onlookers. Print media reporters also had to attend to a flurry of calls from their news bureaus as television channels went to town with breaking news yet again.
As that bout of frenzy was gradually dying down, the investigation team head and Kottayam SP Hari Sanker came out in his vehicle and was mobbed by the media. They sought confirmation of the arrest to dispel speculative reports floating around the arrest. The officer would only say that the arrest was yet to be recorded.
Mr. Sanker in just over 30 minutes announced outside the office of Ernakulam Range IG Vijay Sakhre a few kilometres away in the city that the bishop would indeed be arrested later in the night after completing the formalities and that he would be taken to hospital for a medical check-up before producing him before the magistrate in Kottayam.
Thereafter the wait was for the visual of the bishop being taken to hospital. A conventional grilled police bus made its way to the interrogation centre around 8 a.m. suggesting that the bishop’s transportation was imminent. Confusion prevailed when that bus returned empty. Instead, it was replaced by a ‘mini-traveller’ with all its windows covered with blinds at 8 26 p.m. It was met with laughs of ridicule as the attempt to ‘protect’ the bishop from media and public glare was not lost on anyone. The police then almost ‘smuggled’ him out in civil dress in a police jeep and used the ‘traveller’’ as a mere decoy.