Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

In search of her identity

Staff Reporter

MHC inmate to be rehabilitated at women's shelter in Pune

RENEWED HOPE: Anjali with the staff of the Mental Health Centre where she has been an inmate for the past five years. Photo: S. Mahinsha

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Anjali, alias Chhaya, has been preparing for her journey back home since Thursday morning. Home is still a faraway memory for her and many others like her at the Mental Health Centre (MHC). But for Anjali, home will now be a battered women's shelter at Shirur taluk, Pune.

The MHC authorities are sending her, along with two of the staff members, to Pune on Friday, where nearer to her own village, she might find her normal rhythm.

This is for the first time that the authorities, within their resource constraints, have been able to rehabilitate a woman inmate from another State in her Hindi-speaking environs.

Anjali's background is something that she has not been able to recollect properly, though she says that she is from Pune, married, with a seven-year-old son. She was brought to the MHC by the NGO, Abhaya, after she was found wandering the streets in 2000. She is fully recovered now and requires only rehabilitative therapy. Letters sent to the address that she had provided had been returned.

The District Legal Services Authority came forward last year to provide to the MHC the services of an advocate for legal aid as well as for helping find shelters for inmates who are ready to leave the hospital. It was through the initiative of Sr. Shirley Mathew, legal counsellor, that a place was found for Anjali at the women's home at Pune.

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