Abhaya case: CBI says no evidence against suspects

The CBI on Tuesday informed the Kerala High Court that the agency has enough clues about the accused in the murder of Catholic nun Abhaya at a convent in Kottayam, but the murderers could not be arrested for want of clinching evidence.

Though two priests and a nun, the primary suspects in the case, had been subjected to narco-analysis tests and questioning, no clear evidence leading to the arrest of the culprits could be derived from those exercises. The CBI told Justice V Ramkumar that Fr Thomas Kottor and Fr Jose Prithrikkayil were questioned in CBI headquarters in New Delhi after the narco tests. But they had denied the charges.

The CBI said it had not tampered with the CD of narco-analysis tests, as suspected by the Court. The CD of the narco-analysis tests presented before the Court was the original one provided to the agency by the Central Forensic Laboratory in Bangalore.