MADURAI: Placing all his hopes on the Madurai bench of the High Court of Madras, 71-year-old man from Bangladesh is anxiously waiting to get his daughter back from police custody after seven long months.
Initially suspected to be part of a sex trade network, the woman was later found to be a victim of it but has remained in custody after her visa expired.
In his petition before the Madurai Bench, A Mohamed Shamsel of Jessore, Bangladesh said his daughter M Sabana alias Rima Khatun, a 40-year-old, was in India on a tourist visa to meet her sister in Mumbai. She then went touring the country and reached Kanniyakumari, the tip of the Indian mainland.
While staying in a hotel there, police wrongly arrested her for immoral trafficking. Though a lower court found she was a victim in the case and ordered her release, Sabana was kept in custody in a private home as her six-month tourist visa expired.
When Shamsel's habeas corpus petition to produce Sabana before it and order her release came up for hearing today, a division bench of Justices R Subbiah and J Nisha Banu directed the Centre to explain the alleged illegal detention.
The matter was then adjourned to February 28.