A 28-year-old Catholic nun, who was gang-raped in the eastern state of Orissa two months ago and who had refused to cooperate with the police in the prosecution process for her lack of faith in the state machinery, has finally agreed to identify the culprits on condition that she remains in Delhi.The victim, who was raped in K Nuagaon area of Kandhamal district’s Baliguda Block on August 25 during India’s worst-ever wave of anti-Christian attacks in that region, demanded a change in the venue of test identification parade, which is scheduled for November 10.
“She is under treatment and therefore cannot travel such a long distance,” Archbishop Raphael Cheenath of the Cuttack-Bhubaneswar diocese in Orissa was quoted by the media as saying. “She had undergone a traumatic experience at Kandhamal, therefore she would not like to go there again to identify the culprits,” he added.
Yesterday, the Kandhamal district court had issued a notice to the nun to appear for the identification parade.
After the August 25 incident, the nun had filed a police complaint at the Baliguda police station, but the police did not make any arrests till a national newspaper, The Hindu, highlighted the case on September 30.
And after the arrest of the accused, she refused to participate in the prosecution process, saying she had lost faith in the state police.
The nun had also said that she was raped before policemen, who remained mute spectators. The violence in Kandhamal began following the killing of a Hindu nationalist leader, Laxmanananda Saraswati, on August 23 by suspected Maoists. Although Maoists claimed responsibility for the murder, Hindu nationalists blamed local Christians for it.
This led to a spate of violent attacks that lasted for more than two months and killed at least 60 people and destroyed more than 4,500 houses and churches in Kandhamal.
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(Source: RI)