THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Fr Thomas Kottoor and Sister Sephy, the convicts in the Sister Abhaya murder case, are currently in jail, the state government informed the High Court on Monday, October 4, 2021. Both the convicts had been out on parole since the outbreak of the second wave of Covid as the prisons department granted parole to over 500 prisoners as part of decongesting prisons.
The government informed the HC that both Kottoor and Sephy were admitted back to prison on September 26. Kottoor is lodged at central prison, Poojappura and Sephy are lodged at Women’s prison, Attakulangara. They had been out on parole for over four months since the second week of May. Activist Jomon Puthenpurackal, who had been the convener of sister Abhaya action council, had approached the HC alleging the parole granted for the convicts were against the norms.
The prisons department claimed that parole was granted as per the recommendation of the prison advisory committee. However, the committee only granted parole to those who were serving terms up to 10 years. There were court directives earlier restricting that such paroles shouldn’t be granted for hard criminals like the accused in murder, rape and child abuse cases. In August, Jomon had approached the CM against the anomaly in granting parole to the murder case accused. The High Court will consider the petition again on Tuesday as the complainant argued that the court should order action against officials who had granted unauthorized parole.