A mother-son duo in Gurugram's Maruti Vihar was rescued by district authorities earlier this week after they were locked in their two-bedroom flat for nearly three years – and that's when Smriti, their immediate neighbour, realised that someone even lived in that apartment.
"The police and the ambulance came here on 21 February, and that's when I got to know what was happening," Smriti, who rents an apartment next to the family's, told FIT.
When she first moved here in October 2022, she assumed that nobody lived in the apartment adjacent to her house, because the door always remained shut and nobody had ever stepped onto the balcony either.
Rescued in Gurugram After Father Sought Help From Police
Earlier this month, the woman's husband, aged 40, had approached Chakkarpur police station, seeking help to rescue his wife and son, who were in self-confinement over the fear of contracting COVID-19.
On 21 February, the mother-son duo was rescued and sent to the Civil Hospital, after a joint effort by the Gurugram Police, the Child Welfare Commission, and a team of psychiatrists.
'Didn't Really Talk To People'
Indu, a neighbour who has been living in the colony for the past 11 years, says that she would often see the woman on her balcony or walking in the society – until the pandemic.
Since March 2020, she would not come to the balcony, neither to clean it nor to hang or dry clothes.
"We would always wonder where the family went because we did not see anyone. They also bought a car and parked it outside, we never even knew when they bought it. I asked her landlady once if she had moved out, and she told me that the woman was still staying there and was afraid of coronavirus."Indu to FIT
'Told Us Son Was Ill'
Kuldeep Tyagi, a property dealer in the colony, told FIT that the father had reached out to him two years ago, seeking another accommodation for rent. Tyagi, however, claimed that while the woman had started stepping out sometimes in the last few months, he never spotted her son.
Kamlesh, 61, who has been living on the ground floor of the same building for the past year, said that while she had never met the woman, she had talked to her over the phone in some instances.
"I've never noticed garbage being kept out or collected from their house. If there was a seepage problem, if the water did not come someday, she would call me. I have also enquired about her son's health. She had told us he was sick."
Kamlesh added that once, she had even asked if the woman had consulted a doctor for her son's health, to which she had responded that she was consulting a doctor online.
"She told me that the doctor would prescribe the medicine and her husband would bring it over."
Kamlesh mentioned that she would often see the father, but even he wasn't allowed inside the house. The son, on the other hand, she had seen only in pictures, and added that he had no friends.
'No One Talks to Neighbours in Cities Now'
The neighbours maintain that people in the society never really talked to each other. Indu said:
"This is what has happened in cities now. People would earlier talk to and keep in touch with their neighbours. Now, no one talks, people rent and shift out of places every few years, so no one has any idea about the other. This has increased more after the pandemic. And we, anyway, never had talked before, so we also didn't bother."
Satish Kumar, who works as a security guard in Maruti Vihar, told FIT, "When the person living right below her house didn't know what was happening, how could we have known that she locked herself and her son?"
However, Smriti added, "The other day, I heard some women telling the child's father that if he had told them earlier, maybe as a society, they could have taken some steps to help her. Nobody was even aware something like this was happening."
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