Nuns fear fall out and want rape case out side local courts

Mangalore Today News Network

Kolkata, Feb 02, 2016: Three nuns who are witnesses in the Ranaghat nun rape case of March 2015 have moved Calcutta high court seeking that the trial be moved out of the local court. Sources say that the nuns are scared of being identified when they arrive in the court while testifying.

Justice Sudip Ahluwalia, while hearing the plea, has set the next hearing date two weeks from now. Till then, all trial processes in the local court will remain suspended, he has ordered. All the accused in the case are hardened Bangladeshi criminals who frequently cross over to India to commit dacoities. and slip back across the border

The trial has been on for two and a half months and has reached a stage where the nuns will have to appear in court. Sources in the police said that the state agency does not have a problem with shifting of court but is worried about the trial getting delayed.

A section of officers say this is a unique case as the rape survivor has relocated and now even the witnesses are expressing apprehension.

According to case records on the night of March 13 last year, eight robbers broke into the Ranaghat convent and raped a 71-year-old nun. The CID section of the state police took up the case and within a fortnight identified all the accused, who were arrested over the next few weeks. The agency even secured the statement of the survivor from Delhi.

Advocate Milon Mukherjee, said there was no legal binding that the confidential statement has to be made in the same court where the matter is pending. 

"Any metropolitan magistrate or judicial magistrate may , whether or not he has jurisdiction in the case, record any confession or statement made to him in the course of an investigation under this chapter or under any other law for the time being in force, or at any time afterwards before the commencement of the inquiry or trial," said Mukherjee.

"This case has taken us to several corners of India and we are looking for a conviction," said a CID source.