Kerala chief minister backs special police unit after Latvian murder case
Kerala’s chief minister backed a missing-persons unit after Ilze Skromane said a delayed response to her sister Liga’s disappearance cost precious time.
Kerala Chief Minister V. D. Satheesan met Ilze Skromane in July 2026 and said the state would seriously consider a specialized police division for missing-person cases, with trained officers in every station. The government also announced a Green Corner memorial in Kovalam for Liga Skromane, the Latvian national whose disappearance and killing exposed how quickly a missing complaint can lose momentum.
Liga Skromane went missing on March 14, 2018, while undergoing treatment for depression at an Ayurveda centre in Pothencode. Her body was found on April 20, 2018, in a mangrove forest near Panathura, about 10 km from the sisters’ accommodation near Thiruvananthapuram. Ilze Skromane said police at Kovalam, Pothankode and Thiruvallam did not initially treat the missing report with urgency, and that she spent about a month searching on her own before the case drew wider attention and the Latvian High Commission and Embassy stepped in.
The case later moved into the courts. In 2022, an Additional Sessions Court convicted Udayan and Umesh for raping and murdering Liga Skromane and ordered compensation for her family. Ilze Skromane said she was grateful to those who stood with the family through the fight for justice, while also pressing for a system that would not leave other families to fight the same battle alone.
Her proposal lands against a steady rise in missing-person cases in Kerala. Official police figures show 8,742 cases in 2020, 9,713 in 2021, 11,259 in 2022, 11,760 in 2023 and 11,897 in 2024. The pattern has put new pressure on Kerala Police to move faster when a person is first reported missing, especially in cases that begin with a tourist, a stranger to the area, or a family that does not yet know which station will take charge.
Satheesan also recalled that he had met Ilze Skromane earlier when he was Leader of the Opposition and said he had supported the bereaved family then as well. For her, the memory of Kovalam is still tied to the first hours of the search: the point at which a missing complaint is either taken seriously or allowed to drift, with consequences that can no longer be reversed.
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