Kochi: Adithya Valavi, the third accused in the alleged forgery of bank documents in the Church land scam case, appeared before the special investigation team for questioning along with fourth accused Fr Antony Kallookaran on Saturday. First accused Fr Paul Thelakat, who did not come to the cyber cell police station here, will turn up in the coming days, the police said.
Adithya, who is out on bail, was undergoing treatment at a hospital at Angamaly. He appeared before the police in the morning and the police quizzed both of them till 4 p.m.
According to K.A. Vidyadharan, DySP, Aluva, and the investigating officer, the officials were examining the laptops of both the priests. "We are currently extracting the details of the emails from the laptops through their mail accounts. It is a long process," he said. "
A meeting will be convened to decide on tomorrow's process of questioning. The interrogation will continue in the coming days," he said.
The investigators want to question the three together and they have given time till June 5 to complete the questioning. The Ernakulam principal sessions court had allowed the police to interrogate the priests in the presence of an advocate from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with enough break time.
The case was registered based on a complaint of the Church of forging documents to defame Cardinal Mar George Alencherry. Adithya sent the documents to Fr Thelakkat who handed it over to Bishop Jacob Manathodath, the apostolic administrator of Ernakulam - Angamaly archdiocese.
He submitted it before the Syro- Malabar Church synod to check its veracity. The police arrested Adithya and charged him with forgery, and his lawyers had alleged severe police excess in the case.
