Bhubaneswar, Sept. 8: One war, two nuclear tests, five Prime Ministers, countless cricket matches. That’s just a sample of the India Annapurna Sahu has missed since 1985.

What was she doing in this period? Watching the peeling plasters on the walls of her decrepit 5x4 ft room in the Gopabandhu Bazar area of Dhenkanal town in which nothing ever happened.

Termed insane by her family members, and therefore unfit to live with them, 45-year-old Annapurna was today freed from her dingy room, in which she was locked away for more than 20 years by her father.

Freedom came after police were tipped off about the illegal detention.

A very weak Annapurna was taken to hospital and then handed over to local NGO Dayananda Saraswati Mission.

Annapurna was imprisoned by her father Brajabandhu Sahu because she had reportedly become mentally ill.

Some 20 years ago, Annapurna reportedly started behaving erratically, following which her father decided that it would be better to keep her confined in a room behind their house, rather than take her to psychiatrists.

Since then, Annapurna has remained in the stuffy room where she ate, slept and even defecated.

Annapurna, who studied up to Class VII, is reported to have developed some sort of mental illness.

“She kept running away here and there. So I kept her confined,” says her unrepentant father, a prosperous businessman.

Annapurna’s father told the police that she was not given clothes as she tore them. “She would tear them out. For the last four months we didn’t give her any clothes at all,” he told the police.

After spending more than 20 years in the ill-lit room, Annapurna looks like a ghost of her self. Her tousled hair has turned grey.

She has practically forgotten how to talk.

But far from taking action against her father, the police are eager to defend him.

“It’s good that she was locked up by her family members. What other option did her father have other than keeping her in a room? It would have been no good had she run away from home and then got raped,” said Debadutta Pradhan, the officer-in-charge of Dhenkanal town police station.

Dhenkanal police superintendent Sanjay Singh also supported Pradhan’s contention saying that no case of illegal confinement can be made out.

Pradhan said the police cannot lodge any case against her father as it cannot be termed illegal detention.

“After all he is the woman’s father,” Pradhan said.

However, the legal fraternity says a case under Section 341 of the Indian Penal Code can be lodged against Annapurna’s father for illegal detention.