HC hands over case of missing woman to CBI

CHENNAI: It is nearly three years since Poomani alias Rani, then aged 26, went missing from her marital home in Salem district. When even an exhaustive search and inquiry by the district police as well as the Crime Branch-CID police did not yield any results, the Madras High Court had entrusted the matter to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in August 2007. With Poomani yet to be traced, her only son Sanjai Kumar, who was just a two-year-old toddler at the time of disappearance of his mother, is longing for her warmth. The inexplicable tangle in the Poomani story is the fact that her husband C Saravanan of Karungalpatti and her father R S Gunasekaran are at loggerheads, accusing each other of either keeping Poomani in unlawful custody or being aware of her whereabouts. The Poomani-Saravanan marriage took place in August 1999. In August 2005, her husband lodged a complaint with the Chevvapet police, stating that his wife was missing from the house and that some jewellery and her dresses too were missing. On his part, Poomani's father Gunasekaran filed a habeas corpus petition in the Madras high court, seeking a direction to the authorities to trace and produce her in court. In his petition, he alleged that his daughter was being harassed by her in-laws. Reiterating that his daughter was not so cruel to abandon her two-year-old son and flee the marital home with jewellery and other valuables, he said Poomani's in-laws must be holding her in their custody against her wish. However, her husband denied the allegations and told the court that he and his father-in-law had financial transactions and that the latter still owned some money to him. He said his father-in-law had taken away Poomani from him, due to these financial transactions. In August 2007, a division bench headed by Justice P D Dinakaran handed over the probe to the CBI after the state agencies said they had no objection to such an order. Even this move has not borne fruits so far. Advocate Vijendran, who is counsel for one of the parties, said the boy's interests had been worst hit by the spar between his father and grandfather, with his mother not around.
7 Jun 2008, 0511 hrs IST, A Subramani,TNN
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