Click to play videoThiruvananthapuram: A retired CBI official has gone on record alleging former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, pressured the agency to write off the murder of a nun in Kerala as a suicide.
Ex-CBI DYSP Verghese P Thomas is referring to the 16-year-old sensational murder of Sister Abhaya in 1992.
Thomas, who investigated the mysterious death of Sister Abhaya in Kerala, has told the Chief Judicial Magistrate in Thiruvananthapuram that Narsimha’s PMO allegedly tried to influence investigation in the case.
He also alleges the PMO was reportedly under pressure from some state Congress leaders.
“In the court I disclosed that its pressure of the then prime minister who might have asked the then director of CBI to shut the case without even chargesheeting anyone or on record it should not be a murder,” he says.
Twenty-one-year old Sister Abhaya was found dead in the well of St.Pious Convent in Kotayam in May 27, 1992.
Although the local police wrote it off as a suicide, the case was handed over to a CBI team under Verghese Thomas in 1993.
It gained media attention in 1994 when Thomas resigned suddenly claiming his immediate superior, CBI Superintendent V Thyagarajan directed him to record the death as a suicide, despite evidence to suggest it was murder.
Thomas believes Thyagarajan may have tampered with progress reports, at the behest of the CBI director.
“But the director had to save his face. If he requests his immediate junior officers, like a DIG then he will lose his face. But if he asks a junior officer who is on deputation he cannot say no and I have sufficient circumstantial evidence for this,” he says.
Thomas still believes Sister Abhaya was raped and murdered and a suicide case fabricated by the state crime branch.
“I was the first officer to investigate the case. From my findings based on the evidences, I was 100 per cent sure it was a case of homicide. But the then crime branch had closed the case as one of suicide. During my investigation, I could find that most of the evidences collected by the crime branch were fabricated and far fetched,” he says.
Reports of a forged forensic report brought the case back into the spotlight last year.
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