The police on Wednesday announced that they had launched an investigation after media reports surfaced that a man had locked his mother in her house for several months, and that she was living in “squalid conditions”.

Larnaca police press spokesman Spyros Chrysostomou said the police are investigating a case of domestic violence, and that the alleged perpetrator, a 58-year-old man, will be “immediately” taken to court and charged.

He added that the man’s mother, a 79-year-old woman who suffers from dementia, “is being handled by the social welfare services and has already been transferred to a nursing home”.

Meanwhile, social welfare services director Maria Kyratzi told the Cyprus News Agency that on September 29, a friend of the 79-year-old woman had requested that she be admitted to a nursing home.

“Cooperation with the 79-year-old’s daughter followed,” she said, adding that there were subsequent “practical issues regarding her transfer”.

However, she said, the social welfare services department “has not identified any reports of events which point to neglect”.

Asked whether workers from the social welfare services department visited the woman after September 29, she said they had not, and added that “there was nothing” about which they were informed “which required an officer to immediately visit the elderly woman to see her living conditions”.

On Wednesday, newspaper Phileleftheros reported that the woman had been locked in her home, that she had been crying out for help for months, and that she was living in “very poor conditions”.