Two Malankara Orthodox Church priests accused of raping a woman parishioner, yesterday surrendered as per the directive of the Supreme Court.
Father Sony Varghese and Father Jaice K George had moved the Supreme Court. The court asked them to surrender.
These two priests were on the run and had approached the court, which for a while stayed their arrest till the case was disposed of. Early this month they were asked to appear before the probe team and the deadline expired yesterday.
While Varghese appeared before a court in Thiruvalla, George surrendered to police at Kollam.
Varghese was later remanded in judicial custody till August 23 and George will be produced before a court today.
The 34-year-old married woman has alleged that the four priests sexually abused her by using her confidential confessional statement. She alleged that they uploaded videos on the Internet and they used them to blackmail her. The Crime Branch of the Kerala police had on July 2 registered a case against Father Varghese and three other priests on the basis of a statement given by the woman.
“The main culprit, the Father, promised to marry her and continued to manipulate her. The Father was a student at that time. Even after finishing his seminary and becoming a priest, he continued the same pattern. Even after we got married in 2006, the priest continued to sexually abuse my wife, blackmail her, saying that he would tell me everything. I got to know all this only in February,” the woman’s husband said.
The police are also probing Bishop of Jalandhar Franco Mulakkal who allegedly abused his position and abused the woman multiple times at a small town near here four years ago.
Mulakkal, a Keralite, has been serving as bishop of a diocese in north India since 2013.
Reporters gather around a police jeep in front of Bishop’s House in Jalandhar yesterday. The police are probing Bishop Franco Mulakkal in a sex abuse case.
