Sharjah
An Indian man is appealing to the public to help trace his mentally unstable wife, a Sri Lankan, who has been missing from their Sharjah home since June 9.
On June 11, Gulf News reported that Rohini Perera, 58, mother of five grown up children, disappeared from the family’s old villa near Al Kuwait Hospital in Al Qadisiya. The woman was wearing a maroon and purple salwar kameez and had left home barefoot.
Her husband M.P. Madhusoothanan, 63, is now requesting the police to intensify their search operations and the public to help join the search.
He said he is making the fresh appeal after search operations recently helped reunite Indian boy Mohammad Perwez, 15, with his family in Sharjah after he ran away from his home two weeks before.
“It has been 45 days since my wife went missing. Sharjah Police had been actively searching for her. We also did our best searching for her in all possible places she might have gone and also following up the leads we got from different people. But we still don’t have any clue about her though we got many wrong leads. It is very strange. She can’t be hiding for so long,” the desperate husband told Gulf News on Wednesday.
“The Sri Lankan Consulate officials have also been spreading the word about her to help find her. Some other Indian community members and nurses, who helped us earlier, are also helping in the search. But I would like to appeal to the police to intensify the search using social media and also the public to spread the word and help us find her.”
Mental issues
Madhusoothanan had earlier said that his wife was under treatment for mental illness after the family’s nearly 30-year-old illegal status was reported in a section of the media during the visa amnesty in the UAE last year.
Apparently, after the reports came out, Rohini felt guilty that she was the reason for the family’s plight and she was a burden for them.
“She stopped eating solid food. She was getting violent if we tried to feed her anything solid. She was concerned about the monthly expenses for her medicines also.”
When she showed the tendencies to leave the house, the family started locking up the doors and kept the keys away.
However, when Madhusoothanan and the couple’s five children in their twenties woke up in the morning of June 9, they found her missing.
“She opened the window and escaped through that. When we woke up, we saw the window and the gate open.”
The couple’s eldest daughter, Jasmine, said the family has “gone crazy” after her mother’s disappearance. “She was my only friend. I stayed home to take care of her while my siblings started working,” she said with her voice choking.
She also revealed that Rohini had showed suicidal tendencies. “One day she tried to pull the gas hose pipe. Another time, she tried to burn the dress she was wearing. She tried to snatch the house key from my father a couple of times. So we were extremely careful about her and I used to hug her while sleeping. But on that night I had fever and she asked me to sleep away from her. I didn’t realise that was part of her plan to run away.”
