One of the three accused in the Sister Abhaya murder case, Sister Sephy, has moved the Delhi High Court on Thursday, against the Central Bureau of Investigation.
She alleged that the CBI used “extremely vulgar” language in the chargesheet against her and conducted a virginity test, violating a woman’s fundamental rights.
Admitting the petition on Thursday, Justice V.K. Shali issued a notice to the CBI, the Central government and the National Human Rights Commission, seeking their responses by January 15.
The court, however, asked Sephy’s lawyer to first convince it about the maintainability of the suit in Delhi when the case was being heard in the Kerala High Court.
Twenty-one-year-old Abhaya was found dead in a well in St Pius Convent in Kottayam in central Kerala, about 160 km from state capital Thiruvananthapuram, on March 27, 1992.
According to the CBI chargesheet, filed 17 years after the incident, since Abhaya found Sephy together with two male priests — Father Thomas Kottoor and Father Jose Poothrikayil, co-accused in the case — in “suspicious circumstances”, the trio killed her and threw the body into a well.
Sephy’s lawyers told the court that after the tests showed that the nun was a virgin, the CBI began a “malicious campaign using the media”, stating that she had “undergone hymenoplasty for concealing the evidence of rupture of her hymen”.
{{/usCountry}}Sephy’s lawyers told the court that after the tests showed that the nun was a virgin, the CBI began a “malicious campaign using the media”, stating that she had “undergone hymenoplasty for concealing the evidence of rupture of her hymen”.
{{/usCountry}}