The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court has closed a habeas corpus petition filed by the wife of a CRPF jawan from Ramanathapuram district after taking into account the fact that the jawan had been declared a deserter from 2021.
The court was hearing the petition filed by B. Vanitha, wife of Balamurugan, who had been posted in Maoist-infested Sukma in Chhattisgarh. She said her husband went back to Sukma after a vacation in 2021, and his whereabouts were not known. The petitioner apprehended that her husband might have been abducted and illegally detained. She sought a direction to the authorities to secure her husband.
The CRPF, in a counter affidavit, submitted that the jawan was under mandatory quarantine due to COVID-19 pandemic situation when he unauthorisedly left the camp in Sukma. A search was conducted, but he could not be traced. A complaint was lodged with the local police.
A warrant of arrest issued was addressed to the Ramanathapuram Superintendent of Police. Desertion from force was a heinous offence and the offenders could be removed from service. The Tamil Nadu units were also informed about the man missing case, it was submitted.
Search operations continued and efforts were on to trace the missing person but to no avail. Missing person advertisements were also published. Meanwhile, following an inquiry, the Sukma Commandant passed an order and the jawan was declared a deserter from 2021.
Taking into account the Commandant’s order, a Division Bench of Justices P.N. Prakash and S. Ananthi observed that as and when the Commandant received information about the whereabouts of the petitioner’s husband, it could be intimated to her and closed the petition.
