The Police department has recommended punitive action against the police officer responsible for arresting Bharathiyamma, an 84-year-old woman on a mistaken identity. Bharathiyamma from Kunissery underwent four years of legal wrangle for no fault of hers.
An investigation conducted by the Crime Branch had found that the police had committed a serious blunder by mistakenly arresting Bharathiyamma in 2019. The report by the Crime Branch officer has underscored the mental trauma that Ms. Bharathiyamma, a widow living alone, underwent in her eighties.
State Human Rights Commission had ordered the State Police Chief to investigate the harassment and ignominy Bharathiyamma suffered for four years.
Bharathiyamma had complained to the Chief Minister seeking action against the police for mistakenly arresting her and wrongly subjecting her through the harrowing legal proceedings for four years.
It was with shock and surprise that a court here exonerated her a few weeks ago following a submission by the original complainant of a 1998 case that Bharathiyamma had not been the accused in his complaint, and that she had been wrongly incriminated by the police on mistaken identity.
The police arrested her in 2019 mistaking her for another woman named Bharathi, who had been facing charges of absconding while on bail in a case filed by a man named Rajagopal from Kallikkad in 1998. The case was against his housemaid named Bharathi for destroying his property.
Bharathi, when arrested in 1998, had apparently given the house name of Bharathiyamma as her address. The police could not trace Bharathi after she was released on bail, and the case remained buried for two decades.
However, after 21 years, the police reached Bharathiyamma’s house and took her into custody, giving her one of the biggest shocks of her life. Bharathiyamma was living alone after her husband’s death. The octogenarian’s earnest implorations fell on deaf ears as the police insisted that she was the Bharathi involved in the 1998 case.
After securing bail from the court, Bharathiyamma faced the legal wrangle for four years. And finally she had to go in search of the original complainant and produce him at the court to get his testimony against her mistaken incrimination.
