INDIA
Times of India
CHENNAI: Clearing the decks for the extradition of an Ooty-based fugitive priest – Fr Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul – to the US where he must stand trial for “first degree criminal sexual conduct”, the Madras high court has upheld his arrest and refused to quash it as illegal detention.
According to U.S. authorities Jeyapaul had sexually abused a 14 year old girl in 2004 while he was parish priest of a local church in Minnesota. He met the girl at a youth conference in 2004 and sexually abused her till 2005. Jeyapaul returned to India on August 31, 2005, to be at the bedside of his critically ill mother.
In 2011, the U.S. embassy sent a diplomatic note, requesting the union ministry of external affairs (MEA) to extradite Jeyapal to stand trial for the first degree sexual offence case, which it said, carries a maximum punishment of 30 years of jail term. The MEA, in turn, issued an order on March 8, 2011 requesting the additional chief metropolitan magistrate, Patiala House Court in New Delhi, to determine whether the extradition request was in order and whether a prima facie exists against Jeyapaul.
On April 19, 2011, the MEA filed an application for warrant for the arrest of the ‘fugitive criminal’. He was arrested on March 16, 2012 at Chimitahalli near Sathyamangalam in Erode district in Tamil Nadu and produced before the Delhi court on March 19, 2012. He has since been housed at the Tihar jail in Delhi.
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