Lax search for missing woman gets police an earful from HC

Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Tuesday frowned at the “superficial” investigation carried out by the police to trace a 23-year-old woman missing since February after she was forcibly taken from Kolhapur to Rajasthan.
“We project Maharashtra police as the best police ... Have mercy on the six months old child left without a mother,” a bench of Justice Bharati Dangre and Manjusha Deshpande said.
The husband had filed a habeas corpus petition to produce his wife, who was “illegally detained” by her father, who did not accept their Feb 2022 inter-community and inter-caste marriage. The man is a Maratha and his wife a Brahmin. The wife’s family, hailing from Rajasthan, had settled in Kolhapur, where her father was a temple priest.
In Nov last year, their son was born. On Feb 5 her father asked someone to inform her that he was in hospital and to visit him. She did not return at night.
On Feb 6, the husband filed a police complaint on learning that she was being forcibly taken to Jalore in Rajasthan. On May 29, the high court vacation judges directed the police in Karveer to visit Jalore and bring her back.
Prosecutor S S Kaushik said she was not found at the residences of her grandparents and her two uncles and they did not know where her father had taken her. “I find it difficult to believe that the police of two states can’t find the girl (sic). It’s unbelievable!” Justice Dangre said.
The judges were miffed that the police made enquiries with relatives, were told that they did not know where the young woman was and they returned.
“ Is this the way? And since when have the police become so polite?” Justice Dangre said.
Taking note that their phones are switched off after the high court order of May 29, the judges asked whether the police did not know the mechanism of tracing persons when phones were switched off.
Kaushik said that on May 22 an advocate for the father informed the high court that she was not ready to return as she was troubled.
“If at all we were troubling her, she would have not left her (then) three-month child with me,” the husband’s advocate Harshad Sathe said.
The judges said that before they issued arrest warrants they would give the police “one last chance”. They directed the Kolhapur superintendent of police to coordinate with his Jalore counterpart, take “effective steps” and produce the woman in the high court on June 21.