Kerala Nuns’ ‘Stand By Me’ Venture Funds Continuing Franco Mulakkal Battle

The photographs coming out of St Francis Mission Home at Kuravilangad appear, at first sight, to tell a modest story. Three nuns sit among sewing machines, fabric and clothes, producing nightwear, bags, churidar tops and home furnishings under an initiative called “Stand By Me – Survivors of Gender-Based Violence.”

Those three women are Sisters Ranit MJ, Alphy and Ancitta. And the reason their small venture has attracted national attention has very little to do with fashion.

Sister Ranit is the nun who, in 2018, accused Franco Mulakkal, then the serving Catholic Bishop of Jalandhar, of repeatedly raping and sexually assaulting her during his visits to Kerala. Sisters Alphy and Ancitta were among the nuns who publicly stood alongside her when doing so meant confronting one of the most powerful figures in their own religious hierarchy.

Eight years later, they are still together. Mulakkal was acquitted by a Kottayam sessions court in January 2022, but Ranit and the Kerala government challenged that verdict before the Kerala High Court. In January this year, after Ranit emerged publicly from the anonymity she had maintained throughout the case, the Kerala government appointed former law secretary B G Hareendranath as special public prosecutor for its appeal.

That is what gives the latest images from Kuravilangad their real significance.

Stand By Me has put these women back into the public eye, but the story it revives is much larger than a clothing venture. The Franco Mulakkal case was one of the most extraordinary sexual-abuse cases ever to confront the Catholic Church in India. It involved a nun accusing her own bishop, allegations that she had unsuccessfully sought intervention from within the Church, an unprecedented public protest by fellow nuns, the arrest of a sitting bishop, a lengthy criminal trial and finally an acquittal that itself remains under appeal.

And Franco Mulakkal is not the only clergyman whose name has entered India’s criminal justice system over allegations of sexual abuse.

Over the years, India has seen accusations involving bishops, priests, pastors, nuns, parishioners, minors and women seeking counselling or spiritual assistance. Some cases remain allegations awaiting adjudication. Some have ended in acquittals. Others have resulted in convictions.

Taken individually, every case must stand or fall on its own evidence.

Taken together, however, they raise a question that India’s churches cannot simply wish away.

The Case That Shook the Church

Sister Ranit’s allegations were explosive because of both their seriousness and the hierarchy involved.

She alleged that Mulakkal raped her 13 times between May 2014 and September 2016 during visits to the Missionaries of Jesus convent at Kuravilangad in Kottayam district. At the time, Mulakkal was Bishop of Jalandhar and exercised considerable ecclesiastical authority within the congregation with which Ranit was associated.

Ranit has said she attempted to raise her grievances within Church structures before eventually approaching the police. A criminal complaint was filed in June 2018.

What followed was unprecedented.

The investigation initially became a source of considerable public controversy because Mulakkal had not been arrested despite the gravity of the allegations. In September 2018, five nuns took the extraordinary step of participating in a public protest at Vanchi Square in Kochi demanding action.

For women whose religious lives were built around obedience to ecclesiastical authority, publicly challenging a bishop was itself a moment of rebellion against an enormously powerful hierarchy.

Mulakkal was eventually questioned and arrested in September 2018. His arrest was historic: he became the first serving Catholic bishop in India to be taken into custody over sexual-assault allegations.

The matter then moved where it ultimately had to move — into a courtroom.

The Acquittal Changed the Case, But Did Not End It

In January 2022, the Additional District and Sessions Court in Kottayam acquitted Franco Mulakkal of the charges against him.

That fact needs to be stated without qualification or euphemism.

Mulakkal was acquitted.

The trial court found significant inconsistencies in the complainant’s evidence and concluded that the prosecution had not established the criminal charges against him to the standard required for conviction. The judgment triggered substantial legal debate over the court’s treatment of Ranit’s testimony, but unless overturned by a higher court, the acquittal remains the operative verdict.

Mulakkal has consistently denied Ranit’s allegations. When she spoke publicly earlier this year, his lawyer again described her accusations as false.

But Indian criminal procedure also permits an acquittal to be challenged.

Ranit appealed to the Kerala High Court in March 2022. The Kerala government separately decided to challenge the judgment. That appeal has remained pending, and Ranit’s frustration at its pace became one of the principal reasons she stepped out publicly this year after years of anonymity.

Her message was remarkably simple: people believed the story had ended.

For her, it had not.

Sister Ranit Finally Put Her Name to the Case

For almost eight years, Indian newspapers referred to her merely as the survivor, the complainant or the nun.

In January 2026, that changed.

Ranit publicly revealed her identity and began speaking about the case in her own name. She said she wanted people to know that she was still there and that the legal fight had not disappeared after Mulakkal’s acquittal.

By then, the group that once surrounded her had dramatically diminished.

Sisters Neena Rose, Josephine and Anupama left the congregation in 2023. Today, Ranit, Alphy and Ancitta remain at the 36-room St Francis Mission Home in Kuravilangad.

That is the context in which Stand By Me should be understood.

It is not important because three nuns have suddenly become entrepreneurs. It is important because it has brought back into public view three women who have spent nearly a decade associated with one of India’s most controversial clerical sexual-abuse cases.

Their presence is a reminder that legal controversies do not simply evaporate when television cameras leave.

The Fight Has Returned to the High Court

Ranit’s decision to speak publicly also brought renewed attention to the stalled appeal.

She complained that the absence of a special prosecutor was delaying the matter and had earlier approached Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. In January, the state government announced the appointment of former law secretary B G Hareendranath to represent it in the High Court challenge to Mulakkal’s acquittal.

Whatever the High Court ultimately decides, it is important that it decides on the evidence and the law.

Mulakkal is entitled to defend the acquittal he obtained.

Ranit is entitled to challenge it.

The government is entitled to pursue its own appeal.

There is no contradiction between respecting an acquittal and acknowledging that appellate proceedings remain alive.

But once the Franco Mulakkal story is reopened, another uncomfortable fact becomes impossible to ignore: India has continued to encounter serious sexual-abuse allegations involving members of Christian clergy.

The Allegations Have Not Stopped

Consider what has happened in Kerala during 2026 alone.

In March, police arrested Santosh Mathew, the 53-year-old vicar of a Church of South India congregation at Paloorukavu in Idukki district.

A 19-year-old woman had gone to the church with her mother seeking counselling over exam anxiety. According to police, the priest asked her mother to remain inside the church while he spoke to the young woman privately, took her to an adjoining parsonage room and allegedly sexually assaulted her.

Police said Mathew subsequently moved between locations in Tamil Nadu before officers tracked him near Velankanni and arrested him. He was produced before a court and remanded. The accusations remain allegations and must be tested through the criminal process.

Then came another case in July.

Fr Dennis Praveen, a Christian priest and retreat preacher, was arrested after a woman complained that he had repeatedly sexually assaulted her between 2022 and 2024.

Police said the two met while she was attending retreats at a Christian worship centre in Chavara, where Praveen was serving. The complainant alleged that the assaults occurred at different places in Kollam and continued after the priest was transferred to another retreat centre in Vizhinjam.

He was arrested in Thiruvananthapuram, produced before court and remanded to judicial custody. The investigation was continuing at the time of the reports, and he too is entitled to the presumption of innocence unless convicted.

These are not cases from some distant era being recycled to manufacture a narrative.

They are current criminal allegations involving clergy in Kerala in 2026.

And There Are Other Pending Cases

Nor does the picture begin this year.

In Kasaragod, Catholic priest Fr Paul Thattuparambil, then vicar of St Paul’s Church at Athirummavu, was booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act in 2025 after a 16-year-old boy alleged repeated sexual assaults.

According to the police account reported at the time, Childline alerted authorities after the teenager disclosed the alleged abuse during counselling. Police invoked serious provisions of the POCSO Act and began proceedings against the priest.

There are also cases involving Indian clergy beyond India’s borders that have inevitably raised questions back home.

In December 2025, Father James Cherickal, a Kerala-origin Syro-Malabar Catholic priest serving in Canada, was arrested by Canadian police on charges including sexual assault and sexual interference, the latter relating under Canadian law to alleged sexual offences against a child under 16. The Archdiocese of Toronto removed him from pastoral ministry following his arrest. Those charges remain to be adjudicated.

Again, none of this permits guilt by association.

A criminal allegation is not a conviction. A priest does not lose the presumption of innocence because another priest committed a crime. Nor should millions of Indian Christians be placed in the dock for alleged offences committed by individual clergymen.

But the seriousness of the allegations requires scrutiny, not silence.

Some Cases Are Not Merely Allegations

That distinction becomes particularly important because India’s clerical sexual-abuse record also contains cases in which allegations have actually resulted in convictions.

The Kottiyoor rape case remains one of the starkest examples.

Robin Vadakkumchery, a Catholic priest who served as parish vicar and managed the school attended by the victim, was convicted of raping and impregnating a 16-year-old girl.

A POCSO court initially sentenced him to 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment. The Kerala High Court subsequently upheld his conviction while reducing his sentence to ten years. The rape and POCSO findings remained intact.

The circumstances were particularly disturbing because the case involved a minor within a community in which the priest possessed both spiritual standing and institutional authority.

Then there is Fr Edwin Figarez, another Catholic priest from Kerala.

Figarez was convicted over the repeated rape and sexual assault of a minor girl in his parish. In February 2024, the Kerala High Court upheld his conviction while modifying the sentence to 20 years’ rigorous imprisonment.

In September 2025, the Supreme Court suspended his sentence and granted him bail while his appeals against the conviction remain pending. The important distinction is that suspension of sentence did not amount to setting aside the conviction; his challenge remains before the Supreme Court.

These cases matter because they prevent the debate from being reduced to an argument that every accusation against clergy is merely an unproven allegation promoted by hostile critics of the Church.

Some allegations have been tested in court.

Some have resulted in convictions.

The Orthodox Church Has Faced Its Own Scandals

The Catholic Church is also not the only Christian denomination in India to have confronted such allegations.

In 2018, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church faced an extraordinary scandal after a woman alleged that several priests had sexually exploited her, with allegations that information connected to confession had been used in the course of blackmail and abuse.

Police registered criminal cases against four priests. Arrests followed, and the allegations became another national controversy over the extraordinary degree of trust believers place in religious figures and what can happen when that relationship is allegedly abused.

Again, individual guilt has to be determined individually.

But the allegations touched something particularly sensitive: confession is one of the most private relationships imaginable between a believer and a priest.

When accusations repeatedly arise in circumstances involving counselling, confession, convent hierarchy, parish authority or responsibility for children, the common thread is difficult to miss.

It is power combined with trust.

The Question Is Bigger Than Franco Mulakkal

This is why the return of Sister Ranit to the headlines matters.

If the discussion stops with whether Stand By Me sells dresses and bags, we have missed the story entirely.

The bigger story begins in Kuravilangad but does not end there.

A nun alleged repeated sexual assaults by a bishop.

A 19-year-old approaching a priest for counselling has made another allegation.

A woman attending religious retreats has accused another priest.

A teenage boy has made allegations against a Catholic vicar.

Other priests have already been convicted for abusing minors.

Orthodox clergy have faced allegations involving the misuse of extraordinarily sensitive religious relationships.

Different churches.

Different victims.

Different accused.

Different evidence.

Different judicial outcomes.

Nobody should dishonestly flatten those distinctions.

Franco Mulakkal was acquitted.

Robin Vadakkumchery was convicted.

Edwin Figarez remains convicted while his Supreme Court appeal is pending.

Santosh Mathew and Dennis Praveen face allegations that have not yet produced convictions.

Those differences are fundamental to any responsible account.

But recognising those legal distinctions does not require society to shut its eyes to the recurring phenomenon itself.

India Cannot Treat Every Case as an Isolated Scandal

Whenever a fresh allegation emerges, there is an understandable temptation for institutions to treat it as a problem involving one priest, one complainant and one police station.

Perhaps in each individual criminal case that is precisely how the law must approach it.

Society, however, is entitled to look at the wider record.

Schools are scrutinised when repeated allegations emerge involving teachers.

Sporting organisations are scrutinised when athletes repeatedly accuse coaches.

Political parties are questioned when multiple figures face accusations of sexual misconduct.

Ashrams and religious organisations belonging to India’s majority faith have rightly faced intense public scrutiny when gurus or religious leaders have been accused — and especially when they have been convicted — of sexual crimes.

Christian institutions cannot reasonably expect a different standard.

Nor should asking questions about clerical sexual abuse be presented as an attack on Christianity.

Indian Christians are entitled to every constitutional protection enjoyed by every other citizen. Churches are entitled to religious freedom. Priests and bishops accused of crimes are entitled to due process and the presumption of innocence.

None of those rights includes immunity from scrutiny.

Indeed, ordinary Christians have perhaps the greatest interest in ensuring that genuine cases are exposed rather than allowed to stain an entire community.

The Women at Kuravilangad Are a Reminder

That brings us back to the three nuns sitting behind their sewing machines at Kuravilangad.

Sisters Ranit, Alphy and Ancitta did not disappear when the television cameras did.

Ranit did not disappear after Franco Mulakkal was acquitted.

She has put her name and face publicly to the allegations, her appeal remains before the Kerala High Court and the state has now appointed a prosecutor to pursue its own challenge.

What the High Court eventually decides must be respected.

Perhaps it will uphold Mulakkal’s acquittal. Perhaps it will find reason to interfere with the trial court judgment. That is for the judiciary, not an editorial, to determine.

But the wider issue no longer depends upon the fate of one case.

India has seen enough allegations involving Christian clergy to ask difficult questions. It has seen pending prosecutions. It has seen arrests. It has seen allegations involving children and vulnerable adults. And it has seen convictions.

That does not establish collective guilt.

It establishes the need for collective attention.

Stand By Me may be what brought Sister Ranit and the other Kuravilangad nuns back into the news this week.

But what their story should really bring back is the question that never went away.

How many more allegations, prosecutions and convictions involving men of the cloth will India have to confront before clerical sexual abuse is treated not merely as a succession of embarrassing individual scandals, but as a serious issue deserving sustained national scrutiny