BENGALURU:The wife of a missing police constable, denied a family pension for 13 years, has finally heard good news from the state government, thanks to the intervention of Upa Lokayukta Subhash B Adi.
Shanthamma, wife of M S Suryanarayana Rao, was sanctioned the pension on June 12. The government took the decision soon after Justice Adi sought an explanation for the delay.
Adi had recently shot off a letter to DG-IGP Om Prakash, secretary of the Home Department and the Superintendent of Police, Bengaluru Rural, seeking to know why Shanthamma had been kept waiting so long.
The government responded quickly by sanctioning the pension. She will get arrears from the day her husband went missing in 2003, the order said. Shanthamma had filed a complaint with Adi three months ago and explained to him her travails over the past 13 years.
She had been pleading for a family pension ever since her husband went missing.
Suryanarayana Rao was working at the Soolibele police station in Bengaluru Rural district. He took premature retirement on December 10, 1987, as he was suffering from a psychological illness. He went missing on August 16, 2003, and hasn’t returned since. Shanthamma lodged a complaint at Chelur police station, then in Kolar and now in Chikaballapur district on July 17, 2006, after her efforts to trace her husband yielded no results.
The police were not able to trace Rao either, and kept the case pending. That in turn meant Shanthamma could not get a family pension. Her brother Badarinath told Express she was finally relieved. “When I explained her suffering to a school teacher, she suggested we meet the Upa Lokayukta. Thanks to him, our problem of 13 years was solved in three months,” he said.
