Gwalior bishop’s “accidental” death: Family seeks federal probe

By Jose Kavi

New Delhi, March 29, 2022: The death of a Catholic bishop in a road accident in central India three years ago is making news again after his family demanded a federal probe.

Claramma Constatine, a younger sister of the Bishop Thomas Thennatt says they want the probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation to find out the real cause of the death.

Pallottine Bishop Thennatt of Gwalior died December 14, 2018, succumbing to a severe head injury.

The bishop, who was 65 then, was returning to his residence after an annual function in a school when his car skidded off and overturned.

He was rushed to the nearest hospital and then admitted to St. Joseph Hospital in Gwalior, a major city in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

Pope Francis on October 18, 2016, appointed him the Gwalior bishop, the first Pallotine to become a prelate in India.

Constantine, a retired nurse, told Matters India March 28 that the family suspects foul play in the prelate’s death. “We believe he was killed, but we don’t have any substantiating evidences to prove our suspicion,” she told a press conference a day earlier in the state capital of Bhopal.

She says the family plans to approach the state High Court to demand the federal probe into the death.

Constatine, who lives in Jaipur, capital of neighboring Rajasthan state demanded an impartial probe into Bishop Thennatt’s death.

She told the media that the family doubts the police version of the death.

She questions the diocesan authorities for burying the bishop without the mandatory autopsy.

Six months later, Dolly Theresa, a local Catholic woman, approached a local court suspecting foul play in the death.

The court then ordered the police to exhume the body for autopsy, which was done on June 10, 2019.

The autopsy report observed three deep wounds on the bishop’s body. Constatine says the real reason for the death was those wounds. Those wounds, she asserts, did not happen in the accident.

She finds it odd that the driver and two others who were with the prelate at the time of accident had escaped unhurt. “This indicated foul play in the death,” she said.

She also noted that the statements given by the three to the police were contradictory indicating the prelate had not died in the accident.

Constatine’s son-in-law Pastor Lovers Masih, who had accompanied her to Bhopal, said the diocesan authorities did not allow the family to take the bishop’s body to his Kerala, his native state.

The duo alleged the diocesan authorities later gave the driver a better job in a school, perhaps as reward for cooperating with the conspiracy to do away with the bishop.

They regretted that Cardinal Oswald Gracias, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, and other Church officials had ignored their pleas for help to find the truth behind Bishop Thennatt’s death.

They said they would go the Supreme Court of India in New Delhi if the Madhya Pradesh High Court in Jabalpur fails to support the plea.

A Church official in Gwalior, who did not want to be named, told Matters India, “We are open to any probe as we have nothing to hide.”

Bishop Thennatt was born in a family of six on November 26, 1953, at Koodallor in the Archdiocese of Kottayam in Kerala. After matriculation in 1969, he joined the Pallotine minor seminary in Thiruvananthapuram (then Trivandrum), Kerala capital.

He was ordained a priest in 1978 by Bishop Joseph Fernandez of Quilon, Kerala. He began his priestly duties as assistant parish priest at St. Vincent Pallotti Parish of Amravati in Guntur diocese, Andhra Pradesh, for a year in 1979.

He had served as pastor in the undivided Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra states.

Bishop Thennatt was the director of family apostolate, youth ministry, Small Christian Communities, as well as member of many commissions of his congregation. He was served as the rector of the Regional Theologate at Ashta, Bhopal, for ten years.