A son's letter to his father ignites hope

FROM A CORRESPONDENT

Agartala, May 29: The former Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru while in jail wrote a series of letters to his daughter Indira Gandhi. These letters were immortalised in the form of a book ‘Letters of a father to his daughter’. Here the case is reverse and none of the writer or the receiver is a celebrity. So what will be the fate of the letter is not yet known. But this innocuous letter raised hope of a reunion of a son Amar Biswa Jamatia, who gone on missing 16 year ago, with his parents Biswajit and Anpati Jamatia living at Malbasa, a remote village of Amarpur sub-division in South Tripura district. Amar Biswa in his letter written from the Maulavi Bazar district jail of Bangladesh urged his father to make arrangement to release him from the jail. ‘I am eager to meet you and mother’, he wrote.

Recently Amar Biswa came in contact with the members of the Bangladesh Red Cross Society, details of which is not yet clear. But the Red Cross people took the initiative and obtained a letter from him. They sent it to their counterpart in Delhi who in turn forwarded it to their Agartala office.

On May 27, a three member team of the society comprising its secretary Mihir Pal, member Nirmal Barman Roy and treasurer Sanjib Debth went to the house of Biswajit at Malbasa village. In his absence they handed over the letter to Amar Biswa’s illiterate mother Anpati and informed her about its content.

Hearing that her son is still alive the lady breaks down to tears. Biswajit who went for fishing in Dambur Lake, on return learnt about the letter and got emotiolly charged and became eager to meet his son. He immediately rushed to the Bangladesh Mission to seek their help and now preparing to write to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Government of Tripura requesting them to secure release of his son.

Biswapati Jamatia said that in the year 2000 his only son Amar Biswa, a 21 year-old young man at that time got missing. They informed police also but all was in vain. They lost all hopes and started believing that he is no more. Now the letter has ignited a new hope among the parents.