A magistrate court here on Friday acquitted two chemical examiners accused of altering the results of the forensic tests conducted to detect the presence of semen in the vaginal swabs taken from Sister Abhaya’s body after her suspicious death in 1992.
The prosecution case was that they had altered the results purportedly to aid those interested in making the alleged rape-murder appear an accident or suicide.
Chief Judicial Magistrate V. Vinson Charlie dismissed the case against R. Geetha, former head of the State Chemical Examiner’s Laboratory (SCEL), and her subordinate, M. Chitra, for want of evidence. Sister Abhaya’s body was found in a well inside the Pious 10 Convent in Kottayam. The SCEL analysed the tissues, body fluids and vaginal swabs taken from Abhaya’s body on April 10, 1992. It concluded that ‘semen was not detected” on the examined samples. In 2007, a media report contradicted the laboratory’s findings stating that its report had been “corrected” to show there was no presence of semen in the samples it analysed.
The report spurred Joemon Puthenpurackal, head of the action council constituted to bring Abhaya’s “killers” to book, to move the court against the examiners, accusing them of conspiracy and forgery to save the nun’s assailants. The court ordered the registration of a case that led to the arrest and remand of the accused and a protracted legal battle, which riveted the attention of the public. The police also raided the laboratory and seized documents pertinent to the case.
The examiners argued that the corrections were made in the workbook, which is not a statutory document. They deposed that the alterations were done during the course of the repeated tests, the results of which could vary. It was an accepted procedure that the initial findings were either “erased, scored off or confirmed.”
