India: Man reunited with family after 16 years

Patna: An Indian villager has returned home in Bihar much to the delight of his family having been captive in Pakistan for 16 years.

58-year-old Ram Chandra Yadav, a resident of Bhawani Bigha in southern Bihar’s Nawada district, was 42 when he suddenly went missing from his home one day. His family say he was mentally disturbed. Initially they thought he may have gone somewhere in the neighbourhood but as the years passed, they lost hope of his safe return.

The joy of the family knew no bounds when a Border Security Force official contacted the local police station in-charge and sought full details about Yadav. The BSF official also asked the police to intimate the family about the return of the man from Pakistan and send them to the BSF head headquarter to take him home.

The family had no idea that the man had strayed into the Pakistan territories and remained there in captivity all these years. It was from the BSF that they came to know about this.

Mentally unstable

According to officials, he had been mentally unstable for some time and reached Punjab after aimlessly wandering here and there. He crossed into Pakistan from the Dera Baba Nanak border in Punjab after which he was taken into custody by the Pakistani rangers.

Yadav was handed over to the 89th battalion of the BSF by the rangers on August 19. The BSF authorities too didn’t have full details about him at that time. The only information they had was that he hailed somewhere near the Bhawanipur areas in Nawada but thanks to the local police station, he was reunited with his family.

“The only thing the BSF sent me to locate his family was his photograph and the name of a village but when I reached that village no villagers could identify him. I returned to the PS empty-handed,” Kashichak police station in-charge Raj Kumar told Gulf News.

“Then a miracle of sorts happened one day. I was sitting in the police station when a group of local villagers reached me to register an assault case and I showed them the photograph to identify the man. One of them hurriedly identified him as his kin. Subsequently, I called his wife to identify the man and she too identified him as her husband. It was then that I sent all the details to the BSF so that the man could be handed over to his family,” the official said.

“Everyone believed he was no more but I didn’t. I have regained my lost world,” his wife Sakunti Devi said.

The man had three sons and two daughters. The youngest daughter was eight-year-old when her father left the home. In his absence, his younger brother and in-laws provided support to the family. Four of his five children are married now.

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