Kerala: Elderly woman locked up at home rescued

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A routine house visit by Kovalam Janamaithri police’s community relations officer Ashokan and beat officer Shibunath threw up something out of the ordinary on Tuesday. They found a 70-year-old woman languishing in a dinghy, unhygienic cell in the backyard of her ancestral home at Vaikolkulam.
Neighbours told the police that the elderly woman was locked up in the cell for several years and that her widowed sister was staying in the house.
“The cell, whose walls were made of bricks, could barely accommodate an adult. It had a tin roof and a rusted iron grill door. The structure was unsuitable for human habitation,” said Biju, Kovalam Janamaithri coordinator. They summoned the sister, who worked in a nearby restaurant. She was part of the cleaning crew there.
The Janamaithri police regularly visit areas under their limits and enquire the welfare of residents and offer assistance in genuine cases. Each week, the team would visit different areas and ensure people don’t have problems. “When the policemen asked why she had locked up her sibling, the sibling tried to evade saying that she would bathe her sister in that small cell. They didn’t believe her words. We waited for a day and visited the residence again,” said Kovalam SI J S Ratheesh.
On Wednesday, he too accompanied the team. They found that the old woman was locked up inside the cell. The aged, unmarried woman, who exhibited signs of mental illness, was taken to the Mental Health Centre at Oolampara in the capital for treatment and police initiated steps to ensure her rehabilitation after treatment.
The sister had rented a portion of the house to a tenant. She was living in a single room of the house and had a kitchen. Her husband had died several years ago and she was living with her sibling after the marriage of her daughters.
Police instructed her to vacate her tenant by the time her sister returned after completing her treatment. They also offered to shift the elderly woman to an old-age home in Kovalam if the sister had difficulties. The sibling was poor and nobody was offering her financial assistance. Police did not register a case give these circumstances.