Click to play videoBhadrak (Orissa): External affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee's recent visit to Pakistan has provided 48-year-old Bidyadhar Patri a glimmer of hope. During Mukherjee's tour, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf assured that prisoners of war would be allowed to meet their relatives from India.
Bidyadhar, a resident of Kalyani village in Orissa, now hopes to make that Pakistan trip and bring back his father, Anand Patri, who has been languishing in a Lahore jail for the past 42 years. “After I meet the external affairs minister I will definitely go to Pakistan to meet my father. And this time I will not return without bringing him back home," he says.
Anand, an army soldier, went missing in the 1965 Indo-Pak War. Bidyadhar was a six-year old then. His father was taken to be dead, but three years back, an advertisement issued by the External Affairs Ministry changed their lives.
The ad said Anand has become mentally unstable after years of imprisonment. “I just can't hold back my tears after hearing about him after 42 years. I am sure I will be able to see him again,” says Anand’s sister in law Rukmani Padhi.
The family says Pakistani authorities have so far not freed Anand on some technical grounds. They hope to get the external affairs ministry's help in arranging Anand's release.
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