Abhaya case: Expert ok with narco tests

In a new twist to the 1992 murder of a nun whose body was found in a well, the CBI told the Kerala high court on Monday that an outside expert was “satisfied” with the narco-analysis tests of the three accused.

In a new twist to the 1992 murder of a nun whose body was found in a well, the CBI told the Kerala high court on Monday that an outside expert was “satisfied” with the narco-analysis tests of the three accused.

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The death of the 21-year-old Sister Abhaya of Pius X convent in Kottayam on March 27, 1992, sparked a debate, as initially, the state police dismissed it as a case of suicide.

The CBI, handed the case in 1993, told the HC that Justice Cyriac Joseph, former Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court and now a Supreme Court judge, had checked the CD of the narco-analysis tests at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Bangalore on May 23, 2008.

The CBI observation came on a contempt petition filed by the victim’s father A. Thomas on the agency’s failure to verify reports that the CD was a fake. The court had directed the CBI to verify the CD.

Thomas’s counsel, however, argued that Joseph inspecting the tapes of a murder case being investigated in Kerala was “very strange”.