MUMBAI: Two years after he went missing and after his family gave up all hopes of him being alive, Bhanudas Karale has ‘turned up’ in a prison in Pakistan.
Bhanudas, 59, a native of Nagapur Vadgaon in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, went missing during a visit to hospital in Pune in January 2010. Bhanudas was being treated for mental illness. “In September 2011, we received a handwritten letter from my brother Bhanudas with his photo. He wrote that he was lodged in Lahore prison and wanted us to contact Indian authorities to establish his identity so that he could be set free,” said Dattatreya Karale.
Bhanudas had handed over the letter to an inmate Gulab Singh, who was set free in August 2011. Gulab met Neeraj Sharma, reporter of Punjab Kesari, on the Attari border and requested to post the letters of fellow inmates Satinder Pal Singh and Bhanudas. Sharma contacted Jas Uppal, a UK-based lawyer and human rights activist, on whose request he had come to interview the freed prisoners on the Attari border.