After rigorous public charges of foul play and sabotage, Kerala’s High Court in Kochi Nov. 20 overruled a move to transfer the trial judge from the high-profile case against a bishop in the alleged rapes of a nun.
Critics said the transfer of Judge G. Gopakumar, announced Nov. 12, would have stymied the completion of the three-year-old case against Bishop Franco Mulakkal of Jalandhar that oversees the accuser’s convent.
Gopakumar, who heads the district trial court in Kottayam, was the first to reject the bishop’s attempts to dismiss the case against him. Mulakkal’s subsequ-ent appeals to the appellate High Court and the Supreme Court in New Delhi were also denied. For months, trial proceedings have been closed to the public and news coverage is forbidden.
“The trial is in the final stage, and transfer of the judge at this stage is no doubt a body blow to the case. We are happy that the [state’s] top court has considered our demand,” Fr. Augustine Vattoly, said, calling the transfer timing abnormal. Vattoly, a priest in the Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese, is a supporter of the survivor and five nuns who stay with her.
The Kerala government, with High Court approval, directed Gopakumar to take a new post in Thiruvananthapuram, the state capital, 90 miles south of Kottayam. The High Court’s weekend order requires that Gopakumar complete the trial before a transfer can take effect. The rape survivor and both her supporters and Mulakkal’s had urged the court to keep Gopakumar in place to finish the rape trial.