After the Kottayam Sessions Court acquitted Bishop Franco Mulakkal of all charges in the Kerala nun rape case, his lawyer claimed that the victim was trying to falsely frame the bishop, due to the ‘influence of certain elements’. Speaking to Republic after the sensational pronouncement, the lawyer said that the case was not against Bishop Franco Mulakkal but against Christianity.
“It was a false complaint made four years ago. She was joined by police officers and some paid middlemen. This case was not against the bishop but against Christianity. As a nun, she could have sorted any differences within the church. But she dragged the court because she was acting like a pawn for some elements,” the lawyer alleged.
Reacting to the possibility of the survivor moving to the Kerala High court, the lawyer said, “You can move to the secondary court, we are ready to fight. There is nothing she can prove further.”
After 26 months of trial, the Kerala court has found Franco Mulakkal not guilty of raping a nun from the Missionaries of Jesus convent in Kuravilangad. Notably, the media was prohibited from reporting details about the trial, as per Bishop Franco’s counsel’s request.
Kerala nun rape case
A Kerala nun had rocked the Catholic Church with allegations that Franco had assaulted her 13 times during his visits to the convent between 2014 and 2016. The rape case against the Bishop was registered by police in Kottayam district in 2018, while it began in November 2019. Franco was the first Catholic bishop in India to be arrested for rape, based on a complaint of a nun. The court had concluded the hearing on January 10 and reserved its verdict in the case.
The pronouncement held significance, due to the victim’s three-year-long fight for justice for one of the most influential and powerful heads of bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. In her complaint to the police in June 2018, the nun had alleged that she was subjected to sexual abuse by Franco, then Bishop of the Jalandhar, between 2014 and 2016.
The Special Investigation Team which probed the case arrested the Bishop and charged him with wrongful confinement, rape, unnatural sex and criminal intimidation. If Bishop Franco was found guilty of the crime, he would have faced a minimum sentence of ten years imprisonment and a maximum of life imprisonment.
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