Santhosh took all the time he needed to deck himself up before stepping out of the Government Mental Health Centre in Kozhikode on Saturday. In a freshly ironed shirt that had traces of talcum powder on it, he looked shy, yet happy.
For, home was where he was headed to. Thirty-year-old Santhosh, who had been missing from his home at Madhavanaikana Halli in Karnataka, was reunited with his family, who had rushed to the city as soon as they got information about him.
Santhosh’s mother Narayanamma and brother Venugopal were accompanied by three of his cousins. After a tearful reunion in front of his fellow inmates, Santhosh was discharged and the happy family left for Bengaluru in the evening.
Santhosh had been mentally challenged by birth. He had undergone treatment at various hospitals, including the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in Bengaluru, before he went missing from home one night in 2010. His father Mahadevappa and brothers had filed a complaint at the local police station and had even run newspaper and television advertisements in an effort to find him.
“Santhosh does not remember how he reached Kozhikode. He was a bit aloof in the beginning, but warmed up to us after a while. He did remember that he was from Alur village. We conducted our investigations based on that,” said M. Sivan, a former Home Department official volunteers to search for the relatives of patients at the Mental Health Centre.
“He is very calm and quiet and was fit to be discharged long ago. But we did not have the whereabouts of his relatives,” said T. Shobhita, psychiatric social worker at the centre, who, with Mr. Sivan, played a major role in tracing the relatives of several inmates.
