Aastha Thakur
Published on: 28th September, 2022 at 21:42 IST
The mother of a five-month-old kid who was pronounced dead twice by the police, the municipality, and the local panchayat officials is finally hopeful that she can reunite with the child after she was jailed in connection with the suspected murder of her husband in 2015.
The Patna High Court’s intervention and its instruction to the Gaya police chief may have put an end to Munni Devi’s 27-year-old struggle to be reunited with her son, who is now 7 years old.
Gaya SSP Harpreet Kaur sprang into action and the kid was rescued from the house of her late husband’s parents after the court became convinced that the child is alive after viewing the photo and documents given by Munni and stating this in as many terms as possible. He now resides at a childcare facility.
The petitioner has fought the legal battle from the lower court to the high court in spite of false death certificates of her son being shown by the authorities. She was separated from her son when she was 20 years old, as she was arrested for killing her husband. The father-in-law of the woman had lodged an FIR against her whole family. When she started searching for her son, her in-laws told her about his death after she went to jail. But she was sure her son was alive as she had seen him on various occasions when she was out of jail on bail.
Then, she lodged a complaint in Gaya District Court alleging his paternal grandparents were hiding her son, and then the matter dragged on. The in-laws were granted anticipatory bail on the ground that the child died from diarrhoea.
The petitioner, as her last hope, approached the High Court of Patna on September 27, 2021.
The counsel representing the child’s mother submitted the documents and photographs to prove that the child is alive and sought a deadline for recovery. After that, things finally moved in the right direction.
At Gaya SP’s request, a Division Bench of the Patna High Court postponed the case for one month, but with the direction that the youngster be found within 48 hours.
The Bench of Justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and Purnendu Singh stated that, “The Court is primarily concerned with the safety of the child whose photograph has been brought on record and who may probably now be a victim due to the circumstances in which the family of the in-laws of the petitioner are placed today,”
The SSP (Patna) Manavjit Singh Dhillon and the Municipal Commissioner of Patna made the argument that the death certificate attached to the counter affidavit filed by the state may be a forgery.
In addition, the court has ordered that the son’s DNA be tested.