Options to rehabilitate surviving sisters explored

The government is exploring various options to provide housing for the three sisters and their father who survived a suicide attempt after being evicted from the Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

Among the proposals that cropped up at meetings with stakeholders were to put the family under the care of a women’s welfare organisation, an NGO-run home or a rented house.

Chief Minister N. Rangasamy is said to have offered help in arranging housing and the Ashram has reiterated its readiness to offer monthly assistance.

However, before finalising on an alternative accommodation for the three sisters and their father — the immediate task seems to be extending counselling assistance, most likely at Nimhans (National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences) in Bangalore.

“Though a few viable suggestions and offers for help cropped up, the priority now is to offer them some expert psychiatric assistance. These are persons who tried to end their lives so we need to wean them away from this unfortunate ideation,” a top government official said.

“What they seem to require is fortifying of the mind … they need to be evaluated by experts. Only after they become mentally strong enough to cope with life on their own would we be able to lodge them in an independent house,” he added.

While there has been criticism against the police for having left the sisters and parents unmonitored the night after they were removed from the Ashram-run Ambabhikshu apartments based on a Supreme Court directive, officials aver that what happened — the entire family attempting suicide in which two sisters and the mother were drowned — was “extremely rare and unexpected.” The officials stand by their decision pointing out that given the acute distress in which the five sisters were after being evicted, sheltering them with their parents was certainly the soundest thing to have been done, though what transpired was beyond belief. The thinking now is that only after the family is determined by an expert psychiatric evaluation to have overcome the crisis, they can be left to deal with life on their own.