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Justice may delayed not denied to Vidyadhar Patri of Dhamnagar in Orissa's Bhadrak district, who has been running from pillar to post in search of his missing father Ananda Patri, incarcerated in a Pakistani jail after being taken Prisoner of War (POW) in the 1965 Indo-Pak war.
Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in this regard would write to External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukharjee as well as Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan seeking release of Ananda, who was a soldier in the Indian Army and missing.
Ananda was a sepoy with Bengal Engineering G Company at the Dharampur Military Camp in Kanchrapara, West Bengal, family sources informed.
It may be noted here that the External Affairs Ministry had claimed that Ananda, was released from the Central Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore on August 13, 2007.
Vidyadhar had seen hope when he recognised his father from a photograph of a POW named Naseem Gopal in a Pakistani jail published in local Oriya Newspapers here on February 7, 2003.
He had contacted then Orissa Home Secretary and now member of Revenue Board, Santosh Kumar on March 29, 2003.
"I told him that the photograph published was that of my father," Vidyadhar recollected after meeting Orissa Chief Minister here along with officials of NGO Diganta, which is working for POWs.
The Orissa Government had then informed the Ministry of External Affairs about the claim of Vidyadhar.
External Affairs Secretary, Shivshankar Menon, subsequently wrote to Diganta General Secretary Utpal Roy that the Ministry was making all efforts for the release of Ananda.
Roy received a letter from the Deputy Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs stating that Naseem Pal (not Gopal), who might be Ananda Patri, was released from a Pakistani jail on August 13, 2007 and was at the Government Mental Hospital in Amritsar, Punjab. Vidyadhar and Roy then went to Amritsar to meet the person.
"I was told that my father is now at a government-run mental hospital in Amritsar, but when I went to meet him I found that the person was not my father," Vidyadhar said.
"The photograph which was published in the media or the photographs sent to me by the MEA bear no resemblance to the person they showed me at the Amritsar mental hospital," Vidyadhar said.
On July 02, 2008 Roy received a letter from the Indian High Commission, Islamabad to which Vidyadhar father's photograph was sent. "During a recent visit to Kot Lakhpat jail, Lahore, when all the prisoners were presented, no photograph bearing the resemblance of the photograph enclosed in your letter could be seen," it said.
"Hence I would suggest that you may wish to treat the matter as closed," it concluded.
Vidyadhar still does not know what happened to his father. "This is a gross violation of human rights where a person has been kept in jail for the last 33 years and the Indian government is not taking any initiative for his release," Roy said.
As Patri's family reeling under object poverty, Revenue Minister Manmohan Samal, who hails from Dharmanagar area, has assured to help Patri's family to get married Ananda's granddaughter. "Chief Minister is my last hope. We are really missing our father," conclude tear eyed Bidyadhar.
