Kottayam SP D Shilpa said that the police have sought a legal opinion from the special public prosecutor to make an appeal against the judgment.
Franco Mulakkal, who was acquitted on Friday, had been arrested in 2018 on charges of sexual assault.
A day after a Sessions Court acquitted Roman Catholic Bishop Franco Mulakkal of the charge of raping a nun in a convent, Kerala police on Saturday sought legal advice to move an appeal against the verdict in the High Court.
Kottayam SP D Shilpa said that the police have sought a legal opinion from the special public prosecutor to make an appeal against the judgment.
“We got the detailed verdict late Friday. We have sought a legal opinion to move the appeal,” she said.
Bishop Franco Mulakkal was declared “not guilty” in the 2018 nun rape case by the Kottayam Additional Sessions Court on Friday.
Franco Mulakkal was the first Catholic Bishop in India to have been arrested on charges of sexually assaulting a nun. He was arrested in 2018.
THE CASE
In her complaint, the 45-year-old nun had said that on May 5, 2014, the bishop visited the Kuravilangad convent and called her to his room at night and forced her to have unnatural sex with him. The nun had alleged that the bishop raped her 13 times between 2014 and 2016.
Following the complaint, many nuns, activists and political leaders came forward demanding the arrest of Mulakkal. He was arrested in 2018.
Mulakkal had claimed he did not stay at the convent in Kuravilangad on May 5, 2014, the day the nun claimed that she had been raped for the first time. He maintained that he only visited the convent and stayed at another convent in Muthalakodam.
While denying the charges, Mulakkal said this was because he had ordered an internal probe against her after a woman complained that the nun was having an affair with her husband.
WHO IS FRANCO MULAKKAL?
Bishop Franco Mulakkal is from Mattom village in the Thrisur district of Kerala. He was ordained as a priest in 1990 and became an auxiliary bishop in 2009. He was appointed as the bishop of Jalandhar in 2013.
He was accused of having raped the nun during his tenure in Jalandhar. Facing heat over the nun’s allegations, he stepped down on September 15, 2018, after the Kerala Police summoned him for interrogation.
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