THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Police in Kollam have booked six well-to-do children, including two living in the Gulf, for abandoning their partially paralyzed, octogenarian mother. Under India’s powerful Maintenance and Welfare of Parents & Senior Citizens Act 2007, children who do not look after aged parents face three months’ imprisonment and cannot even appeal against the punishment.
This is the first case being registered under the law that came into force in the state barely four months back. According to the police, Laxmikutty, 84, had given birth to 14 children, eight of whom died young, but none of the remaining six were prepared to look after her in the twilight of her life.
The police arrested the eldest of them, Ramanan, 58, in Kottayam, some 62 km from here, and was let off on bail. Police are on the lookout for her other children, Rameshan, 56, Ramani, 50, Rajendran, 48, Reghunath, 46, and Ragini, 43.
“Reghunath and Ragini are working in the Gulf. We hope to arrest the rest of the children soon,” police sub-inspector Shareef said. “Her condition is really pathetic. She’s too weak to move on her own”.
Alerted by neighbors, the police found Laxmikutty abandoned by her children in her house early this month. They immediately hospitalized her with the help of a local NGO and informed the children. “One of her daughters-in-law responded and came to stay with her in the hospital. But she was missing after three days,” said C Gopalakrishnan, vice-president of the Kottayam panchayat (village council). “We then thought of taking legal measures and shifted her to an old-age home run by the Missionaries of Charity near here.”
Ramanan, meanwhile, told the police that his mother was bedridden for the past eight years and he was not able to stay with her since both he and his wife were working elsewhere. Initially, the mother was staying with Ramanan. Then his brothers promised to take care of her and asked him to leave her alone in her house. But nobody was there to look after her as she had already transferred her house to her son, who is in the Gulf.
The bill adopted by the Parliament last year also has a clause to punish those who abandon their relatives whose property they have inherited or would get as their legal heirs.
The law provides for setting up of a tribunal in each district for helping the old in distress. They can approach the tribunals for maintenance themselves or depute somebody to approach on their behalf. The law says that if the elderly have handed over their property to children or next of kin who do not take care of them, the property would revert back to the original owners.
In India, about 51 percent of its 1.1 billion people are younger than 25, and two-third of them belong to below 35 years of age group.
The number of old people is growing and 113 million Indians are expected to be older than 60 by 2016 as against the current figure of 81 million.
According to the Kerala Planning Board, the number of aged persons has increased at a rate double than the overall growth rate of population. As per the 2001 Census, 10.5 percent of Kerala population is senior citizens.
The life expectancy in Kerala stands at 73 as against 63 years at the national level. Projection studies indicate that the number of 60+ in India will increase to 10 crores in 2013 and to almost double or 19.8 crores in 2030.
