Cured mental patients long to go home, await SC order on release

BAREILLY: Dressed in a pink t-shirt and pyjama, Sumitra, who has been living at the mental hospital here for over 12 years, misses wearing bangles, earrings and colourful clothes, as she is made to wear the “old boring uniform” of the hospital daily. Though she lives a “comfortable life” at the hospital, she still longs to go back to her family and “re-live her old normal life.”
“I like this place but I miss my earlier days when I was free to do everything I wished. I still remember when I would daily go to the market to buy vegetables and groceries. I would cook meals for the family but here, I am served cooked food and have to do only two work — eat and sleep,” said Sumitra (35), who was delighted when she was told that the SC will soon be hearing a PIL for release and rehabilitation of normal patients.
Recalling her journey from her house in Ghaziabad to the mental hospital in Bareilly, the woman said, “After my two-year-old old son died due to illness, I suffered from mental shock. One day, I left home and went somewhere but because of God’s grace, police brought me here. After I was cured a few years back, hospital authorities tried to trace my family in Ghaziabad but to no avail.”
The SC, responding to a PIL after TOI reported the matter, may have deferred the hearing of the case till the end of the summer break, but the 70 men and women like Sumitra who have been declared normal by doctors but are forced to languish in the mental hospital for years as their kin are untraceable cannot wait for the judgment on their freedom.
Sheila Devi, who was only 20-year-old when she was admitted in 1984, said, “I crave to see the outside world and do not wish to die within the four walls of this hospital. I hope that the court comes to our aid and helps us in locating our families.”
Another such patient, Ajay Singh (51) from Ramnagar (Uttarakhand) and who was admitted in January 1995, said, “It was my brother who deserted me here 21 years ago. No one came to meet me and my family never wrote or called me in all these years. My family may have forgotten me but I miss my children, parents and siblings. I do not know what residential address they gave here, but I wish to go back to home; after all, they are my family.”
There are few patients who do not want to go home after receiving cold response from their relatives but still wants “freedom”. Thirty-eight-year-old R P Singh, a native of Lakhimpur Kheri who used to run a Xerox shop before landing up at this hospital in 2009 said, “My parents have passed away while my stepmother and sister consider me burden. They do not want to accept me. Even I do not have any desire to go back to them, but it will be wonderful if the government shifts me somewhere else or provide me some skill training to earn my livelihood.”