Police have charged a Catholic bishop of repeatedly raping a nun in India at a rural convent church.
Over the last seven months, cases of bishops and rape cases have been on rising with questions being raised whether Catholic churches should allow marrying.
The victim filed a complaint in June last year, but police only started formal questioning in September as fury over the case mounted.
Mulakkal was arrested in October before being released on bail. Senior members of the church in the southern state have supported the 55-year-old bishop, however, and he was cheered when he returned to his diocese
The report indicates that Franco Mulakkal was charged with raping the nun several times between 2014 and 2016.
He now faces that charges of unlawful detention, unnatural sex, and abuse of authority and faces life imprisonment if proven guilty of the act.
The police report backing the charges ran to more than 100 pages and contained statements from nuns, priests, and other bishops, media reports said.
In February, Pope Francis publicly addressed the sexual abuse of nuns by clerics for the first time, insisting the Vatican takes seriously reports of sexual abuse and the “sexual slavery” of nuns.
Police say they are looking into other cases of abuse of nuns and allegations that four Kerala priests blackmailed women during confession to force them to have sex.