Abhaya’s Dubai-based brother feels peace at verdict

Our Correspondent

In Kerala’s longest-running murder investigation – the mysterious death of Sister Abhaya on March 27, 1992 – a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court in Thiruvananthapuram had pronounced a Catholic priest and a nun guilty of the murder and sentenced them to life imprisonment last week.

The elder brother of the murdered nun, Biju Thomas, is a Dubai resident who works in the hotel industry. To him, Sr Abhaya is Beena, “a sweet, innocent girl who was incapable of hurting anyone or anything.”

Speaking to Khaleej Times, he termed it was “divine intervention” that brought the culprits to justice. Sr Abhaya, 19, was found dead inside in the well of the St Pius Convent X convent in Kottayam and it was passed off as a suicide by vested interests.

Father Thomas Kottoor and Sister Sefi were pronounced guilty by CBI special court judge J Sanal Kumar, who said that the death was a clear case of murder.
Fifty-one-year-old Thomas told Khaleej Times that his dead parents can finally rest in peace. The verdict should have come through when his parents were still alive, he said remembering that his parents died in 2016 not knowing what happened to their daughter.

He said he could not say he was happy, but now he could be at peace about the closure in the case. I can finally put this tragedy behind me.” Thomas had spent several years going in and out of courts in India with his father before moving to Dubai in search of work.

Thomas was 21 and working in Gujarat when Abhaya was killed. Both the Crime Branch and the CBI termed the death a suicide. He left his job and stayed back in Kerala for a year and a half, in the hope that the case would be solved. Thomas said he then left to find job in the Gulf as the family was in financial crisis.

Although he had given up, his parents did not. In 2014, the case was closed. Human rights activist Joemon Puthenpurackal formed an action council and pursued the case all these years.

Thomas also thanked the media “for not forgetting the case”. In a 2018 interview with Khaleej Times, Thomas had said he had lost faith in the judicial system. But he said his father had predicted a few months before his death that justice would prevail and the truth would come out one day.