A close relative of a Catholic priest found dead under suspicious circum-stances inside a major seminary in southern India has demanded a federal agency probe to establish the truth. Father K.J. Thomas, 62, the then rector of St. Peter’s Pontifical Institute, Bangalore (now Bengaluru) in Karnataka state, was found dead with multiple injuries outside his room at the seminary on April 1, 2013.
“My uncle was physically tortured and murdered in the most inhuman way,” Joyson Mathew claimed in a March 27 communiqué addressed to Archbishop Peter Machado of Bangalore, blaming ethnic rivalry within the archdiocese for the suspected murder.
The nephew of the deceased priest said his family was not happy with the tardy investigations conducted by the state’s police and urged the Arch-bishop to pursue the Karnataka state government to hand over the probe to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), a premier federal agency.