Bangalore: senior citizen found chained on roof of son’s house

Mangaloretoday/NDTV

Bangalore, June 5: A senior citizen in Bangalore was rescued today from the roof of his son’s house, where he was regularly kept chained. Neighbours phoned the police for help.
 
"They tied me up today...They give me food, rice and saru..." said the man to a local television channel. Disturbing images before he was unchained show him crouching under a small enclose under the water tank on the roof. He was lying with his legs bent on a faded mattress, an empty plate next to him.

 

"There was a foul smell...it was totally unhygienic," said senior police officer Revanna. The rescued man has been moved to a hospital and the police says it’s likely to file a case against his son for illegal confinement and physical abuse.

The senior citizen’s son, Suresh Hanumanthaiah Shetty lives in a lower middle-class neighbourhood and admitted that his father’s chaining was a regular practice.  "He would keep making the house dirty. So in the morning we bring him and keep him here. In the evening we take him inside."

 
He insisted, "We give him food three times a day, morning, afternoon and evening. We give him a bath in the morning."

His wife, Kalpana, said that her father-in-law was kept locked up for his own good.  She said he often had diarrhoea and would "dirty the house" but added that was not the motive for banishing him to the roof.

"We have only tied him up because he might fall down the stairs. That is the only reason...six months ago, he fell from the steps in another son’s house."

The horrors of his story follow that of a 34-year-old woman who was rescued from her parents’ home in Bangalore yesterday where she was kept locked up for five years.