Victim-nun, State file appeals in Kerala HC against bishop’s acquittal in rape case

The nun, who claims to have been raped by Roman Catholic Bishop Franco Mulakkal, and the State government have moved the Kerala High Court against his acquittal in the case by a trial court.

While the victim-nun moved the appeal earlier this week, the prosecution moved the High Court on Wednesday challenging the bishop’s acquittal after getting sanction for the same from the government during the day.

In its appeal, filed through Additional Public Prosecutor P Narayanan, against the trial court’s January 14, 2022 decision, the prosecution contended that the sessions judge, without appreciating the evidence in the correct perspective, ”misconstrued facts and law and gave unwarranted acquittal to the accused” and set him free.

Seeking setting aside of the sessions court’s decision, the prosecution has also claimed that the lower court’s judgement was ”patently wrong, manifestly erroneous and totally perverse”.

On January 14, the Additional District and Sessions Court I, Kottayam, acquitted the Bishop by saying the prosecution failed to produce evidence against the accused.

Mulakkal, 57, was accused of raping the nun multiple times during his visit to a convent in this district between 2014 and 2016 when he was the bishop of the Jalandhar diocese of the Roman Catholic church. The survivor is a member of the Missionaries of Jesus, a diocesan congregation under the Jalandhar Diocese.

In her complaint to the police in June 2018, the nun alleged that she was subjected to sexual abuse by Franco Mulakkal between 2014 and 2016.

The Special Investigation Team, which probed into the case, arrested the bishop in September 2018 and charged him with wrongful confinement, rape, unnatural sex and criminal intimidation.

Trial in the case, which started in November 2019, concluded on January 10. The court had restrained the print and electronic media from publishing any matter relating to the trial in the case without its permission.