A Sri Lankan Tamil woman, claiming that her Chennai-based husband had illegally admitted her in a private asylum at Urappakkam in Chennai and kept her confined there for 20 months, moved the Madras high court seeking Indian Rupees 20 lakh compensation.
A division bench comprising Justice K N Basha and Justice P Devadass, before whom the habeas corpus petition of K Rizmiya came up for hearing, summoned her husband Kaja Mohideen to the court, and then referred the case to be settled through mediation. The mediation has been scheduled for June 5.
Rizmiya’s counsel P Vijendran said she had joined the Abha Hospital in Saudi Arabia as midwife in 2002, and met Kaja Mohideen, a container driver, there. They fell in love and later got married at Ambara in Sri Lanka.
When their daughter was three and half years old, he left for Chennai without informing her. Rizmiya said it took her two years to reach Chennai and trace her husband’s address, only to realize that Kaja Mohideen was already married with two children. He again persuaded her to return to Saudi Arabia, saying the family needed money to settle in Chennai.
According to her, she returned to Chennai in 2008 and insisted that he lived with her. In the guise of taking her to a hospital for treatment, she was admitted in Oxford Mental Health Home at Urappakkam, saying she was insane. Vijendran said Rizmiya said she was in illegal confinement at the ‘home’ for 20 months. She told TOI that she was administered heavy sedatives and fed cheap food by home managers, who later released her after obtaining her signatures on some papers. “I do not know what was written in that paper,” she said in the petition.
Noting that she had worked in Saudi Arabia and given her entire earnings to her husband for nearly seven years, Rizmiya said she had approached the Tamil Nadu Muslim Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK), chief minister’s special cell and the city police seeking help to reunite with her husband. Since no help came her way, she filed the present petition seeking 20 lakh as compensation.
Rizmiya said in the guise of taking her to a hospital for treatment, her husband Kaja Mohideen admitted her to Oxford Mental Health Home at Urappakkam, saying she was insane, Times of India reports.
