A sessions court in Chhattisgarh’s Durg district has disposed of the bail petitions filed by two Kerala nuns arrested on allegations of human trafficking and religious conversion, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday.

“The judge said in one line that he does not have the authority to listen to the bail application because this [matter] comes under the NIA [National Investigation Agency] Act and the NIA court is in Bilaspur,” Ravi Shankar, the secretary of the Durg Advocates Association, told the newspaper.

Shankar added that the court has directed the police to write to the Union government within 15 days regarding the NIA court taking over the matter.

The nuns – Preeti Mary and Vandana Francis – were arrested at the Durg railway station on Saturday. They are members of the Assisi Sisters of Mary Immaculate, a congregation under the Syro-Malabar Church in Alappuzha district’s Cherthala town and were working at a hospital in Agra.

The two nuns and a man, identified as Sukhman Mandavi, were accompanying three women from Chhattisgarh’s Narayanpur district.

Sebastian Poomattam, vicar general of the Raipur Archdiocese, said that the nuns were taking the women to Agra, where they had been offered jobs as kitchen helpers at a convent.

The nuns and Mandavi have been remanded to judicial custody till August 8. They were charged under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections pertaining to human trafficking and the Chhattisgarh Religious Freedom Act.

Their lawyer told the sessions court that the case “is based on mere suspicion that a crime has happened”, The Indian Express reported.

The two women who were allegedly being trafficked are “all adults, and their family members did not have an issue with them going away for work”, the lawyer added.

The nuns and the man will remain in jail until the matter is heard by the NIA court. Another lawyer representing them said they may approach the High Court meanwhile.

Authorities at the Durg Central Prison have assured that the nuns, who are reportedly ailing, will be shifted to the district hospital, The Hindu quoted a Left Democratic Front delegation from Kerala as saying. The delegation visited the nuns in prison on Wednesday.