Son deserts aged mom at Haridwar
It took almost five months to locate the family and return her to them, said the police
KANNUR: In April, soon after Vishu, an elderly mom from Payyannur left for Haridwar with her son. The son came back home but the mother was ‘abandoned’ near a temple pond. The mentally-unstable mother, ended up in the care of police officials in Roorkee. The Roorkee police in turn passed the photograph of the woman to police in Thiruvananthapuram, who in turn informed the Kannur police. It took almost five months to locate the family and return her to them, said the police.
Though the family insists that they did not abandon her but that she was ‘lost’ in the crowd, officials question why there was no search by the children, including two sons and a daughter, for the mother. Last week, the mother was brought back to Payyannur and is now staying with another son. Her son-in-law said that the woman had problems with her memory.
“We assumed that my brother-in-law must have lost her in the crowd. But there were problems with her sons regularly, although it was patched up soon,” he said, requesting that his identity not be revealed. However, the police say this is not a lone case. Every month, they get details of elderly parents being abandoned by children, when they take them to faraway places under the guise of a pilgrimage.