THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Two former employees of the Chemical Examiner’s Laboratory, who had conducted a test on the vaginal swab and smear of Sister Abhaya in 1992, told the CBI special court that semen traces were not detected in her body.
Former Chief Chemical Examiner R Geetha and ex-scientific officer M Chithra told the court that preliminary tests were inconclusive of the presence of semen and later during the confirmatory test only they could find there were no traces of the male reproductive fluid. They said the serology test also yielded negative result suggesting the nun was not poisoned.
Geetha and Chithra were caught in the eye of the storm after reports emerged that they had manipulated the test result in the workbook. A petition was filed in the court seeking direction to book the duo. The workbook was later examined at the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Hyderabad, and it was found that corrections were made in eight places. However, the duo had argued that it was a normal procedure in the lab to correct the preliminary observations. The chief judicial magistrate in 2014 had acquitted the duo in the case.
In the CBI Court, Chithra said it was normal to make corrections in the workbook. She added that preliminary investigations were inconclusive and after several such tests and the final confirmation test only they came to the conclusion that there were no traces of semen in Abhaya’s body.