2 months ago, Bengaluru man deported from Kuwait to Kochi went missing. A body’s discovery confirms family’s worst fears

This came days after the Kerala High Court, while hearing a habeas corpus petition for the man, voiced concerns about the rising number of missing persons in the state.

The body was found in a deserted, thicketed area near the Hindustan Machine Tools premises at Kalamassery, barely two kilometres from the government medical college hospital where Lama had been admitted. CCTV visuals showed him walking out of the hospital on October 10, about 20 minutes after being admitted. At the High Court’s behest, a special police team had been trying to trace him.

Santon Lama, who has been pursuing a habeas corpus petition since October 21, blamed his father’s death on “systemic failure”, saying he couldn’t speak.

“If the government medical college authorities hadn’t let my father leave, he would have been alive now,” he told the media Monday. “How can the government medical college authorities claim that my father asked to leave? Now again the body is brought to the same medical college (for postmortem). I will take up the matter again in the high court.”

Since Santon moved the petition, the High Court had heard the matter eight times in two months. In an interim order after directing the police to form a special investigation team, Justice Devan Ramachandran said, “We can assure him that this court will not rest until we are able to trace the father.”

As Suraj went missing from the government medical college hospital after being admitted by local police, the High Court dubbed him an “alleged detenue”.

On November 21, in its latest interim order, the court said: “We have a lurking suspicion that the ‘alleged detenue’ may be still available very close by; but remaining untraced only because he is unable to express himself.’’

The court added: “This is not the first case where we have seen, in this jurisdiction, citizens vanishing without a trace. In many of these matters, including this, we hortatively believe that the ‘alleged detenue’ is still available and perhaps doing well, but who is oblivious to his own identity on account of factors beyond his control.”

Suraj worked in Kuwait for decades and recently suffered memory loss purportedly due to “alcohol poisoning.” He was subsequently deported and sent to Kochi instead of Bengaluru. He landed at Kochi international airport on October 5, walked out and boarded a bus.

On learning that Lama had been sent to Kochi and not Bengaluru, the family filed a missing person complaint at the Kochi airport police station on October 8. His son learnt from a Kochi Metro feeder bus driver that a disoriented man, later identified as Lama, had to be persuaded to get off the bus at Aluva metro station.

The same day, he was spotted in front of a house in the Thrikkakara area near Kochi, around 12 km from Aluva. After residents alerted police, officers took him into custody and later to the government medical college hospital at Kalamassery, after which his whereabouts became unknown.

Santon, who had been making his own efforts to trace his father, recovered CCTV footage from the hospital showing Lama walking out 20 minutes after being admitted.

Suraj Lama was in the hotel business in Kuwait while his family lived in Bengaluru. According to the petition, on August 31, a friend informed the family that he had suffered “alcohol poisoning’’ in Kuwait and was admitted to a hospital. They were later told he had developed partial memory loss and speech impairment and was unable to recall or say his name properly.

Two weeks later, the family was told he had been taken into custody by Kuwaiti authorities after discharge. He was subsequently transferred to a deportation centre, and on October 7, the friend shared a photograph of an air ticket showing he had been deported via Jazeera Airways on October 4 and sent to Kochi.