Last week,a 66-year-old woman filed a habeas corpus petition for her father and sent the Bangalore police scurrying. Not to find the man but his death certificate. They managed,in the end. Nirmala K Gowda,a resident of Sahakaranagara,petitioned the high court on September 19 that her Ashwatham had been missing for years but the police had not bothered to register a missing persons complaint. The court ordered the police to produce the missing person on September 24. The police knew Ashwatham was dead but that was not enough to convince the court or Nirmala. So they went looking for his grave. In the meantime,they found that Nirmala was Ashwathams daughter from his first wife and knew little about him. She went to the daughter of Ashwathams second wife,who is a doctor in Girinagar,but did not get a response about her fathers death. So she decided to file a police complaint, a Girinagar police officer said. Nirmala then went to former public prosecutor H S Chandramouli to prepare a habeas corpus petition. The police couldnt locate Ashwathams grave but found that his second wife was living in Goa with her son. The police contacted them,but were not able to gather much; only that he had died in 2009 and was cremated or buried in Wilsongarden. The police went to the burial ground and rummaged through records at the crematorium. To no avail. Fast running out of options and time,they sent a notice to Ashwathams second wife and her three children to reveal his date of the death. Armed with this information,the police approached the BBMP office and obtained a fresh death certificate. On September 24,the police produced the certificate in the court. Judge N K Patil admitted it and dismissed the habeas corpus. He also warned Nirmala against filing more petitions but let her off without any penalty. The police,however,arent amused. We have lot of work to do in the police station. Our time is wasted when members of the public resort to such tactics, a police officer said.
