slampur (North Dinajpur), March 27: A 22-year-old youth from a village here has been traced by the Red Cross to a jail in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
The Red Cross said it did not know how he landed in Pakistan from Punjab’s Patiala, where he was studying in a free residential madarsa.
Abdul Karim had gone missing from the madarsa three years ago. His parents Mohammad Tajuddin and Gulshan Begum had taken him for dead till representatives from the Red Cross called on them in December with a letter from Abdul written from the jail.
“Father, I am well. Please look after mother. I am now in a jail in Pakistan. Pray to Allah so that I gain my freedom, and, if you can, try and get me free,” the letter in Urdu reads.
Tajuddin, who translated it, confirmed that the handwriting was Abdul’s.
A homeguard with the Panjipara police outpost, Tajuddin, and his wife, have also send a reply to their son through the Red Cross.
“We are all well and missing you a lot, we will try our best to secure your release,” the father, a resident of Betabi Village, 50km from here, wrote back.
A member of the International Red Cross Society, Baptiste Jacobe de Naurois, when contacted in Delhi confirmed that he was part of the team that had handed over the letter to Abdul’s parents.
“Our counterparts in Pakistan who were inspecting the jails had stumbled upon the youth. They got him to write the letter, which was handed over after the Rawalpindi jail authorities scrutinised it. I personally came down and met our members in North Dinajpur as well as Abdul’s parents. But we still do not know how the youth found his way inside a Pakistani jail and have informed the Indian external affairs ministry,” Naurois said.
The North Dinajpur district magistrate, Sukumar Bhattacharya, recalled the visit of the Red Cross team. “I have spoken to the parents and then sent a report to the Bengal government. But we are in the dark about the circumstances under which Abdul was put in a Pakistani jail,” the district magistrate said.
Tajuddin recalled that from 2005 Abdul stopped writing to the family. “We had sent him to Patiala in 2003 because it was a free residential madarsa. He was planning to become a teacher. Now that we have got proof that he is alive, my wife is insisting that we bring him back at any cost,” Tajuddin said.
The family had not filed any missing person’s diary when Abdul stopped communicating five years ago. “At first we thought, he would come back one day. Then we gave up hope,” the father said.
The home guard said he would approach Raiganj MP and Union minister Priya Ranjan Das Munshi for help to get his son freed.