Bishop sent to Kerala jail, bail hearing on Thursday
Kottayam (Kerala), Sep 24: Bishop Franco Mulakkal, arrested on charges of raping a nun, was on Monday sentenced to two weeks judicial custody by a magisterial court while the Kerala High Court posted his bail plea for a Thursday hearing.
Judge M. Lekshmi of Pala Judicial Magisterial Court sent the bishop to the Pala sub-jail as the police did not seek his custody.
He was presented in the court after his two-day police custody ended on Monday.
Even as he was being produced before Judge Lekshmi, his counsel moved the Kerala High Court in Kochi seeking his bail.
When the High Court posted the matter for Thursday, the bishop was sent to the Pala sub-jail.
Mulakkal, who headed the Roman Catholic Diocese in Jalandhar, Punjab, became the first bishop in the country to be sent to jail on charges of raping a nun.
On Saturday, the magisterial court had rejected his bail and sent him to police custody. A medical check-up of the bishop was conducted at the Kottayam Police Club.
Mulakkal was arrested on September 21 after three days of questioning, he was accused by a nun of repeatedly raping her between 2014 and 2016.
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Count of voters in Gujarat drops by 73.73 lakh to 4.34 crore post-SIR
Ahmedabad (PTI): The names of nearly 74 lakh voters have been dropped from Gujarat's draft electoral rolls after the completion of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise, pegging the total count of electors at 4.34 crore as against the 5.08 crore earlier, an official said on Friday.
The draft electoral rolls were published here by the Election Commission on Friday.
A total of 73.73 lakh voters were omitted from the electoral rolls after the exercise initiated by the EC to clean the rolls, state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) Hareet Shukla said.
"Before the publication of the draft electoral rolls, a total of 5,08,43,436 voters were registered in the state. After the publication of these rolls, the number of voters is now 4,34,70,109," he said.
"During the SIR campaign, the names of a total of 73,73,327 voters have been removed from the draft electoral roll," Shukla said.
The names of voters in following categories were deleted in the draft electoral rolls -- deceased voters (18,07,278), absent voters (9,69,662), voters who have permanently migrated (40,25,553), voters registered in two places (3,81,470) and others (1,89,364), a release from CEO office said.
The SIR exercise began in Gujarat on November 4 and ended on December 14.
After the publication of draft rolls, objections and claims regarding them can be submitted to authorities till January 18, the EC earlier said.
