The Kerala High Court on Monday harshly criticised Cardinal Mar George Alencherry, Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church's Ernakulam-Angamaly Archdiocese, in a case pertaining to a land scam. The court asked whether the Cardinal was beyond the law of the land.

The court's criticism came in response to a submission made by the counsel of the Cardinal that only the Pope had the authority to take action against him if he had done any wrong in the Church land deal as per the Canon law, a set of ordinances and regulations made by ecclesiastical authority.

The Cardinal's counsel made the claim in the High Court during the arguments in a petition filed by a resident of Cherthala, Alappuzha against the Cardinal over the controversial land sale which had brought immense monitory loss to the Archdiocese. According to the petitioner, the Canon law has no legal validity in India.

Claiming that affairs of the Church were governed by the Canon law, the Cardinal's counsel submitted that the Pope alone could take action against him if there were irregularities in the land deal. Several people had petitioned the Pope over the issue but no action had so far been taken against him by the Vatican and this proved that he had done nothing wrong, he claimed.

The criticisms against Cardinal Mar Alencherry came from the single-judge bench of Justice Kemal Pasha in response to this argument. The judge asked whether the law of the land was not applicable to the Cardinal. The judge also asked why no case had been initiated against the Major Archbishop.

Justice Pasha pointed out that the Archbishop was merely the custodian of the Church's property and he could not be equated to the Archdiocese. He also expressed the suspicion whether the Cardinal had the authority to sell Church land for a price less than the one agreed upon by the concerned Church bodies.

The court also observed that the Pope had no jurisdiction in India and that the laws and rules of The Vatican could be applicable only to the internal affairs of the Church. It said that the police should initiate a case if they got a complaint over the land deal in the Archdiocese of the Church.

The petitioner had earlier approached the police with a complaint relating to the Church land scam but they had not taken a follow-up action on that. The court will hear the detailed arguments over the petition next Monday.

The controversy pertains to the sale of over three acres of prime land belonging to the Archdiocese in Kochi city worth tens of crores of rupees to private persons. The lands were sold in two schedules to 36 persons in September, 2016 and between January and August last year and Cardinal Alencherry himself had signed in all the sale documents.

The Archdiocese had suffered huge financial losses through the land sale for which a middleman, whose credibility has now come under suspicion, had been engaged. Cardinal Mar Alencherry has also been accused of taking the initiative to bring in the middleman, Saju Varghese Kunnel.

The Church had decided to sell the prime land for Rs 27 crore - it could have fetched a much bigger price - but it was sold for Rs 13 crore as per the sale documents. However, the amount that had reached the Church's account was only Rs 9.30 crore. The lands were sold in order to repay a bank loan availed for buying land for a now-aborted medical college project.