Convents a hell for ‘Brides of Jesus’ -Who Killed Sister Jyothis?

Demand to reopen probe into nun’s death

Pioneer News Service | Kozhikode

With indications emerging that the case relating to the murder of Sr Abhaya after 16 long years after the arrest of two priests and a nun, demand has arisen for an effective probe into the death of Sr Jyothis at a convent in Kozhikode district on November 20, 1998.

The situation of the death of Sr Jyothis (22) had striking similarities with the death of Sr Abhaya at St Pius X Convent in Kottayam. Like in the case of Sr Abhaya’s death, Sr Jyothis’s body was found in the well of the Sacred Heart Convent at Kallurutty, Kozhikode district.

The body of Sr Jyothis also was found in the wee hours of the day. She had gone to the church from the convent early in the morning, and then her body was spotted in the convent’s well.

Rights workers in Kallurutty said that the autopsy report had said that Sr Jyothis had got a three-cm cut inside her vagina which had bled. Medical and forensic experts say that such scars used to be inflicted in that particular spot only during rapes. However, the autopsy had not linked the death of the nun to the vaginal injury.

The police had claimed that the injury could have been inflicted during the fall into the well, and at that time there had been no further investigations as the autopsy report had put forward any suspicion. But medical experts disputed the claim as such scars would occur mostly during rapes.

The internal organs of Sr Jyothis had been subjected to chemical analysis but the report had not said anything about the vaginal scar.

The chemical examination report had not specified how the cut could have occurred. It also did not suggest the need of an examination as to how it could have occurred. Rights workers said this generated the suspicion that highly-influential people could have interfered in it as in the case of Sr Abhaya’ death.

The local police, who probed the case of Sr Jyothis’s death, had concluded that it was a case of suicide. On persistent demands, the Crime Branch had taken up the case but it had put a freeze on the probe later. Sr Jyothis was daughter of KM Thomas, Karimpeechi, Vayalida, Tthalayad, Kozhikode.

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