Swiss industrialist Pankaj Oswal filed an appeal with the United Nations against the alleged illegal detention of his 26-year-old daughter in Uganda.
Vasundhara Oswal was seized by around 20 armed men, who did not produce an identification or warrant, from Oswal’s extra-neutral alcohol (ENA) plant in Uganda. While she was detained on October 1, purportedly in a missing man’s case, an urgent appeal to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) was filed earlier this week.
A post on Vasundhara’s Instagram handle detailed her “unlawful detainment and arrest”, showing a toilet with blood and faeces on the floor. The post claimed that she forced to sit in a room full of shoes for over 90 hours, and not allowed to bathe or change her clothes for nearly five days. The woman was denied basic necessities, like clean water and proper food, given a small bench to sleep on, and made to participate in a suspect parade.
The EU Reporter said Vasundhara was denied vegetarian food and denying access to her family and lawyers.
Another post on her Instagram handle quoted her brother as describing Vasundhara as a “workaholic”, who developed the $110 million ENA plant in Uganda’s Luwero from “a small tent on a bare land in 2021”. He said her detention was a result of corporate jealousy of an unnamed 68-year-old man, whom he charged with an attempt to extort the Oswal money and drown her reputation.
Vasundhara’s brother further claimed that the authorities did not release her despite a court order, and instead took her to a look court where she was charged with murder.
The WGAD is an expert body of international human rights specialists appointed by the Human Rights Council to investigate the misuse of the police powers, to shine a light on abuse and to intervene with the governments responsible.
Meanwhile, Vasundhara’s mother Radhika Oswal, in an appeal to the Ugandan government, said, “My young daughter has been thrown into a foreign jail. She has been stripped of her basic human rights and her dignity. Vasundhara is an innocent bystander. All I want is her safety.”
The Monitor, on the other hand, claimed that Vasundhara, also the executive director of PRO Industries, and the company’s lawyer were remanded to prison on charges of kidnapping with intent to kill chef Mukesh Kumar Menaria, who has worked for the family for seven years.