Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala nun banished to near-seclusion and poverty since accusing a bishop of raping her has ended eight years of silence to declare she would fight the acquittal of her alleged tormentor till the end.

“I will see to it that this case (is heard in) the high court and (if necessary, in) the Supreme Court. Until I get a verdict from the apex court... I have decided not to rest,” she told a Malayalam television channel on Friday.

The 50-year-old described how she and three other nuns — bundled off to a Church-run convent with her for supporting her fight for justice — worked as tailors to eke out a meagre living, with “food a luxury” on some days.

She said she had been silent till now for fear of expulsion from the Church and the attendant stigma, but her shock at actor Dileep’s acquittal in a case of an actress’s abduction and sexual abuse had now compelled her to speak out about her own misery.

The nun had in June 2018 accused then bishop Franco Mulakkal, of the Roman Catholic diocese of Jalandhar, of raping her multiple times at a convent of the diocese in Kottayam, Kerala, between 2014 and 2016.

As the allegations led to a police case and nationwide uproar, she and five other nuns who had supported her were shunted out to the St Francis Mission Home in Kuravilangad, Kottayam, where they had no duties apart from having to fend for themselves. Two of the nuns left the Church.

Mulakkal, temporarily relieved of his pastoral responsibilities by the Vatican in September 2018, was acquitted by a Kerala court in January 2022. He resigned as bishop in 2023, apparently on a nudge from Pope Francis.

The priest, whom the nun has accused of raping her 13 times, now continues in the honorary position of Bishop Emeritus, staying at a Church-run retreat in Kerala, conducting public prayers and counselling women and children.

In four years, Kerala High Court has failed to take upthe nun’s appeal against the acquittal.

“I chose to remain mum (all these years) as I feared being branded a ‘runaway nun’ if I left (faced the inevitable expulsion from) the Church,” she told her television interviewer in Malayalam.

“For a nun, chastity is considered the highest quality. I have seen with my own eyes how several nuns were branded with that tag (runaway nun), which brought lifelong shame on them and their families.”

She added: “Bishop Franco tried to trap my family and fellow nuns in false cases....”

The nun described the “isolation, intimidation and harassment” she and the nuns who supported her faced from Church authorities.

“We currently survive on tailoring work inside the convent. We also rear a few chickens and ducks to earn a livelihood,” she said.

“When one of the nuns returned to the convent after visiting her parents, she came with two of her father’s dhotis. When I asked why, she replied she could probably stitch a few skirts out of them to be put up for sale.”

At times, she said, she felt as though her “hands and legs have been tied”.

Mulakkal, the first Catholic Bishop in India to be arrested on rape charges, now lives a 40-minute driveaway from the nun’s convent. In an interview to an online news website sometime ago, he had described himself as a “diamond”.

“You can put me in dirty water or on Queen Victoria’s crown, my value doesn’t change,” he had said.

In her interview, the nun said there were two factions in the Church, one that supported Mulakkal and another that did not.

She had a grouse against the Kerala government – she said it had denied her request to appoint a special public prosecutor for her.

Law minister P. Rajeeve told reporters in Kochi on Saturday that it was not the government’s role to do so.

During the interview, the nun answered the TV anchor’s questions, some of them tough ones, with remarkable composure although her voice seemed on the verge of cracking at times.

But she broke down on Saturday night as she watched her interview from the convent, a close acquaintance, Fr Augustine Vattoly of the Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese of the Syro Malabar Church, told The Telegraph.

“I asked her why she was crying. She was silent for a while. I urged her not to cry. Instead, I told her, ‘Let the world cry after hearing your powerful words’,” the priest, who has supported her through the darkest times, said.

In something of a coincidence, the day the nun gave the TV interview, a nun from another congregation who had been expelled for supporting the rape complainant earned her law degree in her new phase in life.

Lucy Kalappura, formerly of the Franciscan Clarist congregation, who continues to wear a nun’s habit, is determined to fight for the downtrodden, particularly abused women and children.