KOCHI: Sr Lissy Vadakkel, the witness in the nun rape case who is facing pressure from the Franciscan Clarist Congregation (FCC) to join the provincial house community at Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh , has filed an application before district court in Ernakulam, under the witness protection scheme “This is the first time that anyone is using the scheme in Kerala. Though the state has not passed any specific laws in this regard, they are bound to obey the SC verdict,” said Shaiju Antony, joint convenor of the Save Our Sisters, an umbrella organization of church reformation groups. The application was filed on Monday.The Supreme Court had on December 2018, approved the Witness Protection Scheme, 2018, prepared by Union of India and directed all states to enforce the same in letter and spirit. The SC had also asked states to set up vulnerable witness deposition complexes by the end of 2019. Legal sources said the court would now have to device a scheme for witness protection.FCC has again sent a letter to Sr Lissy, who had given a statement against bishop Franco Mulakkal accused of rape, asking her to abide by the transfer order and join the provincial house community in Vijayawada before March 31.The letter issued by the provincial superior of the congregation in Vijayawada said Sr Lissy could seek an extension for permission to stay in Jyothi Bhavan at Muvattupuzha near here till April 30. The congregation has also termed the fear expressed by Sr Lissy that the defendant against whom she has given statement, under Section 164, will come to kill her in Andhra Pradesh as ‘irrational angst’. “There is a high amount of absurdity in insisting that you (Sr Lissy) have threat to your life in Jyothi Bhavan, Muvattupuzha, and that you insist that you live there only. It is illogical and I am not able to permit it,” the letter signed by Sr Alphonsa Abraham, provincial superior, FCC, Vijayawada, further said.The letter also accused Sr Lissy of not submitting accounts of her activities in the past 15 years. “We know that you ( Sr Lissy) print and sell books, you collect money from various persons and now this allegation that you are not getting money for your basic needs seems to be, I doubt, a pretext to elicit sympathy from the public so that you can collect more money,” the letter said, calling the allegation that FCC was not giving her money defamatory.

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