Abhaya case - 'truth tests' for priest and nuns

• Two nuns and a priest here were Thursday taken to Bangalore by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to undergo truth serum tests in connection with the mysterious death of a nun, Sister Abhaya, in 1992.


• The CBI team had earlier got permission from Ernakulam Chief Judicial Magistrate P.D. Sarangadharan to conduct the tests on Father Jose Putarika - a former Malayalam professor at the college where Abhaya studied - and two nuns who were inmates of Abhaya's convent.


• Abhaya, an inmate of Pious X hostel near here, was found dead in the well of the convent March 27, 1992. The CBI concluded in November 1996 that the death was a homicide but the murderer remained untraced.


• Thomas Kottor, the Diocesan chancellor of the Catholic Church here, was subjected to the truth serum test last month. Kottor was a professor of psychology in Abhaya's college. V.V. Augustine, a former police official, also underwent the test along with Kottor.


• The decision to conducts tests on Father Putarika and the two nuns was taken after the CBI claimed it got crucial information from the tests done on Kottor and Augustine.


• Three former CBI teams have failed to crack the mystery behind Abhaya's death. The Kerala Police had earlier dismissed the case as suicide.


• A new team was appointed in June after Joe Mon Puthenpurackal, a social activist who formed the Abhaya Action Committee in 1992, met the CBI director in May and demanded a fresh probe.
  The 15-year-old case came back into the limelight in April after a newspaper reported that Abhaya's medical reports had been tampered with at the Chemical Examiners Laboratory in Thiruvananthapuram.


• Two officials at the laboratory, who are alleged to have tampered with the report, are currently on bail. They had undergone a medical examination at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi last week under the supervision of CBI officials.