Pune: Senior Citizens Home Under Scrutiny After Elderly Inmate Goes Missing
Pune: Senior Citizens Home Under Scrutiny After Elderly Inmate Goes Missing
Pune, November 22, 2025: Twelve elderly residents of Asak Vrudhashram Anathashram, a shelter home for the elderly, orphans, and mentally ill individuals, were shifted to a government-aided old age home on Thursday after authorities discovered the privately-run facility operating in unhygienic and unsafe conditions. Many of the residents required urgent medical care and had been living in makeshift huts at Ghorpadi for nearly a month following the shelter home’s vacating of its rented premises in Phursungi due to lack of funds.
Officials reported that the inmates were living without basic facilities or medical support, raising concerns about the functioning of the shelter and oversight by the agencies that referred patients there, including Sassoon General Hospital (SGH).
Asak Vrudhashram Anathashram, registered with the Charity Commissionerate in Pune in 2020, is run by Rugna Aadhar Foundation. The founder of the foundation vacated the Phursungi premises last month after the landlord increased the rent. With no alternate facility, he relocated the residents to temporary huts in Ghorpadi, where they had been staying for 36 days. Authorities rescued 12 of the elderly residents after conditions at the temporary facility were reported to the social justice and special assistance department.
A mentally ill elderly patient, admitted to SGH on September 23, 2024, and later sent to Rugna Aadhar Foundation, has now gone missing. The patient was at the shelter home for over one-and-a-half months before being readmitted to SGH as an orphan. The family, hospital authorities, and the foundation are currently unaware of his whereabouts.
Pune police and the Charity Commissionerate have initiated an investigation into the missing patient. Relatives have also written to the chief minister and medical education authorities requesting a detailed account of the patient’s medical history and current status.
The incident has brought renewed attention to the monitoring and regulation of privately-run shelter homes in the city, highlighting gaps in oversight and the vulnerability of elderly and mentally ill residents in such facilities.
