Presumed dead, elderly man returns home in Jagatsinghpur after 25 years; narrates ordeal

Separation is always painful. However, happiness knows no bounds when someone dear returns home after a long gap. A family in Odisha’s Jagatsinghpur is going through such emotions after one of their family members returned home after a gap of 25 years.

The family had lost all hope and even conducted the last rites. However, they all were shocked after Bansidhar Mohanty, now 70-year-old, returned home at Talakusuma recently.

Bansidhar had left home with the hope of providing a better life to his family and reached Gujarat. However, the family back home had no contact with him for years together.

Bansidhar Mohanty said, “I had faced a lot of problems at the company. I was being tortured and given meals only for one time. I had financial problems for which I could not return.”

Bansidhar’s son Bikash said, “I was around 12 years old when one friend of my father took him to engage him in a job in 1998. I do not know what happened but my father says he was sold there. We got no information about his whereabouts.”

Bikash said that it was his mother who raised him and his siblings with a lot of struggle.

“My mother is no more. I am happy to get my father back. But it hurts a lot to see his condition,” he added.