Chennai: ACP, wife keen on having orphaned boy in family

Chennai: A 15-year-old boy orphaned by the murder of his widowed mother at Ayanavaram last Friday, has found shelter under the benevolent wings of the local Assistant Commissioner of Police. ACP Balamurugan will be the new ‘guardian’ of the distraught kid staying at a government hostel and pursuing class eight at a school at RA Puram.

“I have informed the hostel that I will be the boy's guardian since he lost his mother. I will be bringing him home during the weekends and returning him to the institution in time for school on Monday”, said Balamurugan, expressing the hope he would be able to push his adoption application past the long red-tape so that the boy could become “a proper and permanent member of my family, forever”.

The ACP discussed the kid's tragedy with his wife as well as his two children son aged 14 and daughter aged 7 and they readily accepted his proposal that the bereaved boy should be brought home and be part of their family. “My family not only supported when I broached it but also expressed great happiness. My wife said this kid is God's gift to us, even as fate had delivered a cruel blow to him”, Balamurugan told Deccan Chronicle, proudly sharing his new 'family portrait' of the three kids.      

Parimala, 33, was working as maid in a few houses at Ayanavaram following her alcoholic husband’s death about 10 years ago. 

Unable to meet the expenses of educating her only son, she had admitted him to a government-aided school run by ‘Chennapuri Annadana Samajam’ at RA Puram. She was content to meet the kid, the apple of her eye, during the weekends and would boast to people in her neighbourhood, including the understanding employers, that she would soon be delivered from her poverty and misery by her son after getting educated and securing a great job. 

But fate had other plans for Parimala. A quarrelsome neighbour in a fit of anger over some petty issue, stabbed her on August 31.

 She died on the spot. Police nabbed the killer and remanded him in custody. 

Her son was in the hostel at that time and was not aware of the tragedy, until ACP Balamurugan broke the sad news much later, at the Ayanavaram police station where the kid was taken.

“After they briefed me about the murder, my officers pointed me to this kid seated on a bench in a corner and said he was her son. They answered in the negative when I asked them if the boy knew. They had merely given him biscuits and coffee and made him squat quietly. I took him aside and explained what happened. He was stunned by grief and then he broke down weeping”, recalled Balamurugan.

“I decided I should provide the kid with a proper shelter and concluded there could be no better place than my own home, where he would have a brother and a sister; and a 

mother. I did not want that kid to grow up thinking he’s been orphaned by a killer’s cruelty and 

he should retaliate by evolving as a cruel human himself. My wife and I decided we must heal the kid’s wounds and we can do that only by love”, said the ACP.

For now, the officer is registering himself at the Samajam as the kid’s guardian and he hopes to soon overcome the legal hurdles to secure full-scale adoption so that the boy integrates seamlessly into the family. “He is an intelligent boy. We feel confident he will come up in life, if given a chance”, said Balamurugan.