THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A ‘missing person’ poster flits fitfully in the gust of wind. Kovalam beach is slowly edging its way to a period of lull. It is the fag end of the tourist season. Even as the once busy coastline is settling back for a lean spell, it is still recovering from the aftershock of a foreigner gone missing from the coast. On Wednesday, it turned one week since 33-year-old Latvian national Liga Skromane went missing from Kovalam.
The shopkeepers, security staff, auto drivers and lifeguards all echo the same sentiment, it is an incident that has no parallels. The incident continues to baffle them. The Kovalam beach has seen no incident of this sort, they say. “This is a beach where you can lie down and sleep even in the middle of the night and nothing can happen to you. I don’t think she went missing from here. I think she went missing from some other part of the city,” says auto driver Rajesh.
It is learned Liga was suffering from post-traumatic depression and had come to Kerala for treatment. She was accompanied by her sister Ilze Skromane. According to reports Liga hired an auto and was dropped off at the beach at 8.30 am. She went missing after that.
In 2016, tourists were shocked to hear that a Japanese tourist was sexually assaulted at Kovalam. Today, tourists continue to tread the glorious sands of the internationally-known tourism hub, but they are greeted by the missing person poster with Liga’s photograph. “It is sad,” says Toni Oswick from London. It is her first visit to the Kovalam beach, but she has only good experiences to share. “I feel very safe here. The people are friendly and helpful,” she says. Her friend Fiona Cooke from Australia who is here on her third visit echoes the same opinion. “I feel that Kovalam beach is safe. Wherever you go, you have to be careful. You have to use common sense while travelling. I would avoid alleyways and keep to main roads, as I would do back home. Kovalam was safe before and it still is,” says Fiona who visited Kovalam twenty years ago. “I hope they find her,” she adds.
The lifeguards are on duty for twelve hours, from seven in the morning. “Other than minor issues, Kovalam hasn’t witnessed any untoward incidents in the past. If anything happened to her in the sea, we would have known,” says Biju S, one of the lifeguards. He has been manning the coast for the past five years. For travellers, who have been visiting Kovalam for the past few years, the incident is unsettling. But they feel the beach is quite safe. “I never had a problem. It is awful what happened to her but then we do not know what happened. Maybe she might have just gone off,” says Judith Robins who has been coming to Kovalam to spend her holidays since 2002.
The beach is safe, the foreign travellers would tell you. “The place is quiet, beautiful and I feel safe. I have stayed quite late on the beach and I feel fine,” says Kay Duff from England who is in Kovalam on a holiday. According to her, lone women travellers are at risk. “I personally wouldn’t advise women to travel alone. And that isn’t specific to here,” she adds.
Premachandran S, a security personnel at a private hotel said although there have been some small incidents, Kovalam continues to be safe for tourists who spend their time well into the night at the beach. “The woman wasn’t well, it is heard. And in that instance, she shouldn’t have been left to venture out alone,” he adds.
More surveillance at Kovalam
In its efforts to increase surveillance at Kovalam, the city police have requested hotels and shops in the area to install CCTV cameras. Although City Police Commissioner P Prakash maintains the recent issue of a Latvian woman going missing from Kovalam beach cannot be linked with tourism policing, he said directions have been issued to private enterprises in the Kovalam beach to set up cameras and bring the area under surveillance. “We cannot ensure the surveillance of the whole city without the help of private parties. We need private participation for that. Instructions to set up more cameras have been given to the private parties. We can collect the camera feed from them,” he added. The beach area where the woman is believed to have alighted from the auto doesn’t come under surveillance. “There is no camera there. So I have asked the private establishments here to install cameras,” he said. “We have a tourism mechanism put in place at all tourist destinations. We have deployed tourism police in all tourist areas be it Shanghumugham, Kovalam, Veli or Museum. This is a one-off incident. The woman had come here for treatment and she was suffering from depression. As such, we cannot connect this incident with tourism policing,” he added while maintaining the tourism policing is strong in the tourist areas. “We busted a drug trafficking chain in Kovalam. Around 20 cops are deployed at Kovalam and they patrol at night as well,” he added.