The nun who was raped by a rampaging mob in Kandhamal district of Orissa on August 25 finally broke her silence. On Friday she accused the Orissa police of completely failing to protect her and demanded that the case be transferred to the Central Bureau of Investigation. 

Her face covered, Sister Meena Lalita Barwa made a statement at a press conference under the auspices of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India. 

Sister Meena fought back tears even as she read out the handwritten statement, She said, “I was raped and now I don’t want to be victimised by the Orissa police. I want [a] CBI enquiry.” The State police had “failed to stop the crimes, failed to protect me from the attackers, they were friendly with the attackers, they tried their best that I did not register an FIR, not make complaints against police, police did not take down my statement as I narrated in detail and they abandoned me halfway.” 

Sister alleged that a mob of 40-50 beat her and paraded her half-naked over a kilometre even as a dozen policemen watched. 

‘‘I went to them (the police) asking to protect me...but they did not move,’’ she said. She revealed that it was ultimately the crowd that took her to the police station and that one of the assailant accompanied her. 

She said that when she was giving her statement for filing an FIR, the head constable told her not to go into too much detail. “So I rewrote it for the third time in one-and-a-half page. I filed the FIR but I was not given a copy of it,” Sister Meena said.