INDIA
ABC News
Associated Press
NEW DELHI — Sep 7, 2014
An Indian court has recommended that the government extradite a Roman Catholic priest wanted in the United States on charges of sexually assaulting a teenage parishioner in Minnesota, a lawyer in the case said Sunday.
It’s now up to the federal government to decide whether the Rev. Joseph Palanivel Jeyapaul should be sent to the U.S. to stand trial, said Naveen Kumar Matta, a public prosecutor for India’s Ministry of External Affairs.
The recommendation by Magistrate Ajay Garg was made Friday. The United States had requested in 2011 that Jeyapaul be extradited.
Jeyapaul, a 59-year-old Indian citizen, has denied molesting the 14-year-old girl in 2004 when he was working at the Blessed Sacrament Church in Greenbush, near the Canadian border.
He returned to India in 2005 to visit his ailing mother, and was asked not to return to the Minnesota church after being accused of having an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old.
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