C’garh: 2 Catholic nuns from Kerala, arrested on charges of human trafficking and forced religious conversion, granted conditional bail
They were arrested from the Durg police station last week on July 24 and were under judicial custody since then.
Raipur: Nine days after their arrest at the Durg railway station in Chhattisgarh on charges of human trafficking and forced religious conversion, two Catholic nuns from Kerala were on Saturday granted conditional bail by a special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Bilaspur in the state.
A tribal from Narayanpur district under south Bastar in the state who was also arrested along with the two missionary sisters at the Durg railway station on July 25 was also granted conditional bail by the same court.
Principal District and Sessions Judge (NIA Court) Sirajuddin Qureshi granted bail to the two Kerala nuns, Preethi Merry, and Vandana Francis and the tribal, Sukaman Mandavi, with conditions that they surrender their passports, furnish a bond of Rs 50,000 each, and provide two sureties.
The trio were arrested last week on charges of trafficking three tribal girls from Narayanpur district to convert them, based on a complaint by a local Bajrang Dal activist.
While granting bail to the trio, the NIA court observed that “It transpired from the case diary that the FIR was registered primarily based on a mere apprehension and suspicion of committing the offence by the accused persons. The arrest memo of the accused shows there is no previous record of their criminal history and the parents of the victims (the three tribal women) have filed their affidavits stating that the accused have not allured or forced their daughters for religious conversion or human trafficking”.
Besides, the two victim girls in their statement before the police stated they have been followers of Christianity since their childhood, the court said.
The court further noted that the investigating agency has not sought custodial interrogation of the accused persons.
Later, briefing the reporters after the court judgement, defense counsel B Gop Kumar said the police diary lacked concrete evidence to establish charges of human trafficking and forced religious conversion leveled against the accused persons.
This apart, the three alleged victims are adults and have been following Christianity since childhood, he said.
The Public Prosecutor (PP) in the case had however contested the bail plea of the accused persons arguing that the charges against them were serious in nature.
The bail petitions of the three accused were earlier rejected by the lower court of Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) and the Sessions First Track Special Court in Durg saying that they are not the appropriate judicial platforms to hear the case and said their bail applications can be heard in the NIA court.
The issue had snowballed into a major controversy with the Catholic body and political leaders in Kerala and other parts of the country protesting the arrest of the two nuns.
