HAM radio helps locate mentally disturbed jailed woman's family in Jharkhand

A mentally disturbed woman, now in her fifties and currently lodged in West Bengal's Midnapore Central Correctional Home, will finally get to meet her family after eight years, thanks to the efforts of HAM radio enthusiasts.

Members of the West Bengal Radio Club, also known as HAM radio, on Tuesday managed to locate the woman's family in Jharkhand's Palamu district. After completing official procedures, she will soon be handed over to her family, they said.

It all started in 2017 when police arrested the woman for illegally entering a prohibited area in Kalaikunda defence land. She was later granted bail by a court, but trouble brewed when no one came to take her home.

"She could not explain properly where she was from, and there was no response from the address that was mentioned by police during her arrest," explained Ambarish Nag Biswas, secretary of the West Bengal Radio Club.

"She remained in the correctional facility as no legal authority could be found to take responsibility," he added.

On November 6 this year, Aniruddha Ghosh, the correctional home's welfare officer, contacted the HAM radio club for help.

"Ghosh contacted us after learning that the woman was actually from Jharkhand's Palamu district, not Uttar Pradesh as mentioned by police," Biswas told PTI.

Ghosh contacted the radio club after Shahid Parvez, the secretary of the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) of Paschim Medinipur, spoke to the woman himself.

After listening to her dialect, he suggested that she might be from Jharkhand rather than Uttar Pradesh. Parvez joined as the DLSA here about one-and-a-half months ago.

"Once he raised the doubt about her place of origin, the radio club was contacted and they swung into action," he said.

After almost a month of searching, the woman's family was finally traced to Jharkhand's Palamu. Her husband, Lalji Chowdhury, had filed a missing person report with the local police in 2017, stating that his wife had gone missing.

The couple has a daughter and two sons, and they live in a village under the jurisdiction of Chainpur police station, Biswas said.

Her husband told the authorities, "She was not very stable mentally, but we never imagined she would leave the house and go missing." He said they are now making arrangements to travel to West Bengal to meet his wife and bring her home once all formalities are completed.

The local police in Palamu will verify all the details and inform the authorities in West Bengal to ensure that the woman is indeed going back to her family, sources said.

"The mistake happened when police registered the case. They mentioned that she was from Uttar Pradesh. She was granted bail in 2018, but she had to remain here all these years because the authorities were trying to contact her family in Uttar Pradesh, while she was actually from Jharkhand," Parvez told PTI over the phone.

"I'm happy that we could locate her family," Parvez added.