Cuttack, June 9: Trial of the Kandhamal nun gangrape case, scheduled to resume in the court of the district sessions judge here today, could not begin as Orissa High Court issued a stay order on it.

“Examination of all the 28 witnesses for prosecution was completed on May 17. Recording of statements of all the 10 accused persons was scheduled to start in the trial court from today. But it could not be taken up due to the stay order,” counsel for the accused, Sarbeswara Behera, told The Telegraph.

The vacation court had imposed the restrictions on the trial proceedings on a petition filed by the victim nun.

Earlier, she had filed a petition before the trial court seeking recall of one of the prosecution witnesses, who had conducted the test identification parade. But the trial court judge had rejected it on May 16. Subsequently, she had challenged it in the high court.

While seeking recall of the prosecution witnesses, the nun had alleged that Prasant Kumar Das, the judicial magistrate who had conducted the test identification parade, had misrepresented her statement before the trial court.

She alleged that at the time of the test identification parade, she had only stated that she had identified an accused. But in his statement before the trial court, the judicial magistrate had stated that she had narrated how the accused had behaved at the time of occurrence of the incident, the petition claimed.

“After a preliminary hearing, vacation court bench of Justice B.K. Nayak issued the interim stay order yesterday, while issuing directions for listing of the petition for hearing in second week of July,” victim nun’s counsel Sujata Jena told The Telegraph today.

“Our basic contention is that as per procedure, the judicial magistrate conducting the test identification parade was supposed to just record as to whether the victim has identified the accused person or not. Therefore, he has to be examined again to judge the veracity of is statement,” the nun’s counsel said.

In her petition before the trial court, the victim nun had expressed her willingness to bear the cost of recalling the witness. The trial court judge, however, had rejected it on grounds of maintainability as the petition was filed by the victim and not by the special public prosecutor.