By Ladislaus Louis D’Souza
Mumbai: A July 25 news report on The News Room concerning a 31-year-old married woman’s torture by her husband and in-laws of barely three months, has the name of a Catholic priest, the reference to which makes disturbing reading.
Beaten black and blue, starved, and being thrown out of the house at night, the woman dared to call the police, only to be stopped from proceeding with the call by the husband. And how: the husband, named Jipson, a 31-year-old techie working at a company in Thiruvananthapuram, got the assistant vicar of St Joseph Church, Thevara, Father Nibin Kuriakose to intervene to his benefit.
The priest is said to have “manipulated” her by telling her that she has to continue living with her husband as she cannot go back to her parental home except at the cost of being a burden to her extended family.
“Three days into the marriage, Jipson and his mother started pressing me to ask for money from my family,” she alleged. The report also goes on to say: “Speaking to the media, she said, “Jipson thrashed me brutally at nights covering my mouth. I could not even cry out aloud. They made me starve …. as I stood against selling the gold from my marriage [to buy themselves an apartment]. When my father questioned [them] about the harassments, they (in-laws) attacked him breaking his leg and rib bone.”
The police were said to have done nothing with regard to her complaint, apparently because a relative of his is a police officer. The News Minute reported that it was only “after the victim revealed her ordeal to the media and her family formed an action council demanding justice” that “a fresh complaint was filed with the Kochi Deputy Commissioner of Police”.
If what the victim, a teacher by profession, alleges is true, there clearly emerge not one or two culprits but four, guilty of a heinous crime: the husband who had obviously married her for her money; the in-laws who wrongly imagined that they had a right to decide and do as they wished with what the bride had brought into the marriage; the police who in any case are known for their complicity in immoral and unjust acts; and the most reverend ‘assistant vicar’ who set a bad precedent by failing to live up to his priestly responsibility to stand up for what is right and promote justice.
Would that the bishop of the diocese under whom the priest ministers pull up the priest for his haughty behavior and reprimand—nay, even penalize him. It is also sincerely hoped that the Woman and Child Welfare Department of the Kerala government move speedily to ensure that due justice is speedily done to the victim with all those guilty being promptly brought to book.