Decks cleared for release of Kerala nuns lodged in jail in Chhattisgarh after HM Shah's assurance

New Delhi/Thiruvananthapuram, July 31 Hours after the Union Minister of State for Fisheries George Kurian said on Thursday that a breakthrough will take place soon, as a delegation of Kerala MPs after meeting Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the latter has assured that the two Kerala nuns presently in a jail in Chhattisgarh will get bail.

Speaking to the media in Delhi after the meeting, Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) Lok Sabha MP N.K. Premachandran said that Home Minister Shah has assured that all steps will be taken to see that the nuns will get bail either on Thursday or Friday.

"For this the Chhattisgarh government will file a petition before the NIA court to withdraw as Home Minister Shah has said if for a case to be registered in a NIA court he will have to clear it and that has not happened," Premachandran added.

"So in all likelihood, it's 99 per cent that on Thursday itself the nuns will be released. If not definitely it will happen on Friday. A fresh bail plea will be filed by the nuns in the Sessions court, which on Wednesday failed to hear it saying it's not in their jurisdiction," the RSP Lok Sabha MP said, who on Tuesday visited the nuns in the jail.

Incidentally, Union Minister Kurian hit out at the Congress, saying that only the BJP is interested in resolving the issue of the arrest of the two nuns in Chhattisgarh and the grand old party wants to delay their release for reasons unknown.

Talking to the media, Union Minister Kurian said: "You should understand that it was Kerala BJP President Rajeev Chandrasekhar and State BJP General Secretary Anoop Antony, who started the efforts, and it's currently going on. Very soon, we will be able to hear good news."

He also added that there is some confusion about who moved the bail application in the Sessions court.

"The police brought the three young women (who were found with the nuns) for the hearing of the bail plea on Monday, but much to their surprise, it was not moved in the court."

Union Minister Kurian said that the Chhattisgarh court rejected the nuns' plea as it was beyond their jurisdiction.

Notably, the Chhattisgarh Sessions Court rejected the bail pleas, saying it is "out of their jurisdiction".

"We wish to ask why the Congress MPs from Chhattisgarh were not joining the protesting Congress MPs in Delhi," said Union Minister Kurian, adding that since the matter is sub-judice, he has limitations to speak more on the issue.

The two nuns, Sister Preeti Mary and Sister Vandana Francis, belong to the Assisi Sisters of Mary Immaculate, a congregation under the Syro-Malabar Church in Alappuzha district.

They had been working at a hospital in Agra.

On July 26, while accompanying the three women from Chhattisgarh's Narayanpur district to Agra for jobs as kitchen helpers in a convent, the nuns and a man, Sukhman Mandavi, were stopped at a Chhattisgarh railway station by Bajrang Dal activists.

Acting on the complaint, the nuns were later taken into custody by police on charges of human trafficking and forced conversions.

They were later produced before a local court and sent to judicial custody.

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