Daijiworld Media Network - Puttur (SP)

Puttur, Jul 10: The death of Dharnamma (42) at the government hospital here on July 7 is proving to be a hard nut to crack for the policemen. Dharnamma, who was born and brought up at Onadka in Hirebandady village, and who was found lying unconscious near the old bus stand at Uppinangady six days back, had breathed her last without responding to treatments.

The fact that Dharnamma's relatives from maternal family have been refusing to admit her as their own has given rise to headache for the policemen, as postmortem cannot be performed without a claimant for the body. Station house officer of the rural station here, Anil Kulkarni, said that as per law, conducting postmortem without any heirs is not possible. The police want to get postmortem done at the earliest, as they hope to get definite clues as to why and how Dharnamma collapsed in the middle of the road at Uppinangady, and what was the cause of her death. In the meanwhile, her body has been preserved at the mortuary of the government Wenlock Hospital, Mangaluru.

Dharnamma had told the doctors at the government hospital here that her husband, Shivakumar from Madikeri, had attacked her and left her unconscious. By the time the Uppinangady police went to the hospital and tried to record her statement in the presence of the doctors, she was not in a position to communicate, it is learnt.

Dharnamma's parents and siblings distanced themselves from her after she fell in love and married a person ten years back against their wishes. Her family severed all contacts with her after giving her a share in family property nine years back. Dharnamma, it is said, had a fixed deposit in a bank in Uppinangady, and visited the town once in six months to collect interest thereon.

Dharnamma's relatives at Hirebandady deny knowledge of her marriage. Even when the policemen promised her brothers living at Hirebandady to try to get the fixed deposit proceeds to them as there are no other claimants, they refused to talk or do anything connected with Dharnamma, police personnel said.

As Dharnamma's siblings refused to receive police notice seeking cooperation for postmortem and investigation, the police personnel returned after pasting the notice to the wall of their house. The police personnel are not empowered to force the concerned to get involved with investigation, it is said.

Efforts of the police to find whereabouts of Shivakumar also have come to naught so far. When they contacted different police stations in Kodagu district seeking information about Shjivakumar, they got the feedback that the police there were unable to find such a person. Therefore, the policemen have another aspect before them which needs to be probed, ie, who is Shivakumar, and if he had married her, why did he desert her in that condition on the road.

The police personnel are facing an unenviable situation in which known relatives are not cooperating, unknown ones could not be traced, and postmortem cannot be conducted unless either her parental family cooperates or her husband's family is traced. Without postmortem report, police do not get any leads for probing her death further.