Shivam had gone missing during the devastating Kedarnath floods of 2013, which killed a few thousands. With no trace of him for days after, his brother even went ahead and performed his symbolic last rites. But Shivam, who was living with polio, had survived and landed in Sambhajinagar (formerly Aurangabad) in Maharashtra, with no recollection of how he got there.
In 2021, the temple at which he was staying in Sambhajinagar was burgled and the robbers, who were subsequently arrested, dragged Shivam’s name into the case. The judge before whom he was produced ordered his rehabilitation at Pune’s Regional Mental Hospital (RMH) for “disorganised schizophrenia”.
At the government-run mental hospital that presently has 1,037 inmates, a small detail about Shivam’s school in Roorkee triggered an intense but successful search for his family. With the court ruling out his complicity in the temple burglary and the RMH giving him a discharge, Shivam, 55, was reunited with his brother on Friday.
Dr Shriniwas Kolod, Superintendent at the RMH, told The Indian Express that this was the first-ever rehabilitation of a longstanding case of an unidentified prisoner-patient at their facility. “It was the relentless efforts of our dedicated team that helped in this rehabilitation,” he said.
Rohini Bhosale, Social Service Superintendent at RMH, recalled the difficulties they faced in trying to get information out of Shivam to know where he hailed from. “I tried to figure out some words that he would speak in Hindi, but it was more of a Pahari dialect which was not easy to understand. He also dragged his feet due to polio and I wondered how he could have been involved in a robbery,” she said, as she and her team set about responding sensitively and dedicatedly to the case. It was out of the blue that one day in 2023 he responded to a question about his school, Prem Vidyalaya in Roorkee. It was just this kind of concrete information the team was looking for.
With renewed urgency, Bhosale and the team contacted the police station at Roorkee tehsil in Haridwar district. “We soon got information about his relatives and also learned that he had completed Class 12 from Prem Vidyalaya,” she said.
Bhosale and the others explained Shivam’s mental condition, disorganised schizophrenia, which centres around symptoms like confused thinking and disorganised speech and actions. Bhosale was also consistently helped by other staff. They also informed his family members about the burglary case and remained connected with them via video calls. “The very first video call was a deeply emotional one, with both brothers being moved to tears,” she recalled.
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In 2023, she approached the Shivur police station, where the officers were unaware of the case. However, on checking the old records, the then-officer-in-charge, ASI Vaibhav Rankhamb, found that no chargesheet had been prepared in the case.
The chargesheet was soon prepared and Shivam started to receive court summons. During this time, the case was delayed again by six months due to the judge’s transfer in Vaijapur court. Meanwhile, Shivam’s relatives started to visit him and also hired a lawyer to represent him.
The burglary case came up for hearing at the JMFC Vaijapur court in 2023, where Shivam was declared innocent in 2024. RMH got the court order only last month.
Meanwhile Dr Shama Rathod, Dr Varsha Bedagkar, Dr Ingle, Dr. Amit Gosavi and others supported Bhosale and team in their rehabilitation efforts.
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Shivam’s family members, who have taken him back home, refused to comment about Shivam or the case.
Dr Kolod added that 400 mentally-ill inmates at their facility have been rehabilitated in the last few years. Many of them have even been sent to government centres where they work and earn.
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