By IANS
Kottayam (Kerala) : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is going to conduct truth serum tests on a Catholic priest, a nun and a former police officer in connection with a 1992 mystery death of a nun.
Sister Abhaya, an inmate of Pious X hostel near here, was found dead in the well of the convent March 27, 1992. The CBI concluded in November 1996 that the death was a homicide but the murderer remained untraced.
Three former CBI teams have failed to crack the mystery. The Kerala Police had earlier dismissed the case as suicide.
A new CBI team headed by R.M. Krishna has questioned several people who were interrogated earlier.
The team has sought permission from Chief Judicial Magistrate P.D. Sarangadharan to take Thomas Kottor, the Diocesan Chancellor of the Catholic Church that looks after the convent where Abhaya lived, and V.V. Augustine, a former police officer who prepared the first information report, to Bangalore for the tests. Kottor was also the psychology professor in the college where Asha studied.
A third person who may also be questioned is a nun. No details are available about her.
The new team was appointed last month after Joe Mon Puthenpurackal, a social activist who formed the Abhaya Action Committee in 1992, met the CBI director in May and demanded a fresh probe.
The 15-year-old case came back into the limelight in April after a newspaper reported that Abhaya's medical reports had been tampered with at the Chemical Examiners Laboratory in Thiruvananthapuram.
According to the report, the results of the vaginal swab were positive for semen but were corrected using a whitener and rewritten as negative. Two lady officials of the laboratory have been suspended from service.