By Matters India Reporter
New Delhi, September 12, 2019: The Jesuits of Jamshedpur province in Jharkhand state plan to apply for bail for one of their conferrers arrested for alleged sexual abuse of a minor girl.
“We are preparing the bail and will file it tomorrow in a court in Dhanbad,” Jesuit Father Jerome Sequeira, socius of the Jamshedpur province, told Matters India over phone on September 12.
Two days earlier, the police arrested Jesuit Father Julian Ekka, vice principal of De Nobili College at Koradih, near Dhanbad, and school nurse Emerentia for allegedly sexually abusing a fourth grader girl, aged nine.
The girl’s father complained to the Dhanbad police that the priest, the nurse and her classteacher gangraped his daughter.
The school has denied the charges.
“We have to go through these difficult times. Our present concern is to find a way to get the two out as they are innocent,” Father Sequeira said.
The origin of the case goes back to August 8 when the girl complained of stomach pain and the nurse took her the school dispensary and gave her first aid.
She repeated the complaint again on August 22 and 23 and the nurse not only treated her but called her parents to take her home.
The school authorities were surprised when a police arrived on September 6 to inform the police about an abuse case.
Two days later, they took the nurse into custody and questioned her for 48 hours.
On September 9, the police took Father Ekka in the custody and arrested him and the nurse the next day and presented them before a court.
Father Sequeira says the girl’s statement to the police mentioned only the nurse’s name.
It was her father who took the names of the priest, the nurse and the classteacher to the utter shock of the school management.
The police sent away the classteacher after questioning, but arrested the priest and the nurse and produced them before a court in Dhanbad that sent them to judicial custody.
The two have been booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, a stringent law to check sexual offences against children.
Father Ekka, his superiors and the nurse allege that they were falsely implicated and their innocence would be proved in the court.