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On 13 January, even as dense smog settled upon the city of Chennai after Bhogi celebrations, over 100 people took to the streets in search of a 26-year-old man. M Praveen Kumar, an employee of Savera Hotels, had learning disabilities and had gone missing from TTK Road at 7 am that morning.
Praveen and his mother Vijayalakshmi were boarding a bus to his workplace when she noticed that her son had failed to get on to the bus. Panicking, she rushed to the Teynampet police station to file a missing person complaint. She even made calls to the hotel that Praveen worked for and to his alma mater – Vidyasagar, a school for special children in Kotturpuram.
The two institutions immediately sent out volunteers to look for Praveen. People from the missing man’s neighbourhood, too, took to the streets in bikes and auto rickshaws, hoping to find him.
The next morning at 2:45 am Praveen was mowed down by a vehicle on Anna Salai and he died on the spot. His body lay unidentified in the morgue for two days, even as the city continued to scour through every street and back alley to find him.
Instead, Manavalan who returned from a pilgrimage to Sabarimala on 17 January, found himself being rushed to the Royapettah hospital to identify the body of his son.
In a written complaint to Chennai Commissioner of Police AK Viswanathan, the Disabilities Rights Alliance has explained in detail how exactly the police failed Praveen.
To begin with, the FIR for the missing case filed by his mother was not registered for over eight hours. In addition to this, information was allegedly not passed on to police teams in the city regarding a missing person.
"On 14 January, a day after Praveen went missing, we organised teams to search for him. Close to 200 people were out on the roads and they were told he was wearing a red T-shirt when he was last seen," says Kalpana Rao, the principal of Vidyasagar.
According to Kalpana, the first 24 hours which are crucial to finding a missing person, were completely non-utilised by the police. "Our teams covered Alwarpet, T Nagar and several other areas. But the police had not even started following the necessary procedure to find Praveen," alleges Kalpana.
In fact, details of the case appeared in the police's 'missing' section online, two days after Praveen's body was identified.
Ironically, it was the Vidyasagar poster that even alerted the police about the missing man.
When TNM contacted the Teynampet police station regarding the complaint, an officer who was investigating the case admitted that the FIR was filed only in the evening. "But what do you expect us to do?" he asks aggressively. "We are a central station and have 20 complaints coming at a time. We get so many missing complaints everyday. We have to prioritise what is important and what is not," he adds.
When asked if information on the missing person was sent out to police in the area the same day, he claims, "Yes yes. We informed everybody."
For Praveen's parents and the staff at Vidyasagar, this incident is nothing short of a nightmare.
Manavalan himself has two more children who also suffer from varying degrees of intellectual disabilities.
In their letter to the Commissioner, the Disabilities Rights Alliance has demanded an inquiry into the lapses of the police. They also want bilingual and Easy Read versions of the current and revised standard operating protocol for missing vulnerable adults and intersectionally disadvantaged disabled children to be made public as part of TN Police’s citizen charter.
The group has also requested for CCTV footage from the Adyar Gate Area to the Anna Salai Head Post Office to help train individuals with disabilities on coping with a crisis.
The last request they have made is for 'Permission for a brief gathering to assemble outside the Post Office and pledge safer spaces for the more vulnerable among us and kickstart Praveen’s Protocol – an Indian equivalent of the US Amber Alert system.'
The Amber alert system originated in the United states in 1996 and is used to send alerts to civilians on missing children or child abductions.
A candlelight vigil is being organised in Valluvar Kottam on Monday at 5:30 pm. The gathering is not only a mark of respect for Praveen but is also a movement to create a more efficient system and a secure network for Tamil Nadu's vulnerable population.
(This article has been published in an arrangement with The News Minute.)
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