By IANS
Thiruvananthapuram : A Kerala court Tuesday directed that criminal cases be registered against two government officials for tampering with the medical reports of a nun who died in mysterious circumstances in 1992.
Thiruvananthapuram Chief Judicial Magistrate S. Soman made his ruling in the case of Sister Abhaya — an inmate of the Pious X hostel near Kottayam found dead in the well of the convent – after receiving forensic reports from Hyderabad.
A case will now be registered against R. Geetha, now chief chemical examiner at the Chemical Examiners Laboratory here, and her assistant Chithra.
Geetha had done the chemical examination for the case in 1992.
The 15-year case came back into the limelight last month after an English newspaper reported evidence indicating that Abhaya's medical reports had been tampered with at the Chemical Examiners Laboratory.
According to the report, the results of the vaginal swab were positive for semen and spermatozoa but were corrected using a whitener and rewritten as negative.
Reacting to the order, Geetha told reporters here that all she did was a correction; there was no manipulation involved.
"The changes that were made are according to the findings… it was done not to help anyone. There is no foul play either," said Geetha, adding that she would now fight the case in court.
Though the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been investigating the case since 1993, they are yet to come out with any conclusive evidence. The agency concluded in November 1996 that the death was a homicide but the murderer remained untraced.
The state police had dismissed the case as suicide in 1992.
It is now being re-investigated by the CBI following an order by the Ernakulam chief judicial magistrate in April 2006. He did not accept the CBI's final report and directed it to conduct fresh investigations.