Pranati Deka with her son. A Telegraph file picture

Guwahati, Nov. 19: Relief and hope flooded a wife in Guwahati Jail when her militant husband walked into prison this month, raising hopes of a family reunion after 10 long years.

Lodged in the women’s ward of Guwahati Jail, Ulfa cultural secretary Pranati Deka waits with pangs of a decade-long separation for one glimpse of husband Chitrabon Hazarika, who is in police custody now after his arrest earlier this month.

A source in the women’s ward of Guwahati Jail close to Deka said she admitted to being “restless now to meet Chitrabon”.

She was arrested in 2003 and has been lodged in Guwahati Jail since then.

“They have not even seen each other for so many years. She used to confide how she used to spend sleepless night worrying about his safety. Despite being the leader of a militant outfit, a wife’s emotions and feelings for her husband will be the same. We could feel her concern for him though she did not show it too often,” a jail official said.

A lawyer said it was only a matter of time before Hazarika is remanded in judicial custody and “then they can be reunited”.

“However, male and female prisoners have separate housing arrangements. But given the fact that they are legitimate husband and wife, the jail authorities can make arrangements for their meeting on humanitarian grounds. And if need be, even Deka and Hazarika can seek special permission from the court to meet,” the lawyer added.

However, lawyer Bijon Mahajan — engaged by Deka’s family to handle Hazarika’s case — refused to comment on the subject and merely said, “It is a matter to be decided by husband and wife.”

But the “meeting” of the husband and wife will only be half the story. Also keen to meet both is their only son, 13-year-old Abhimanyu.

After Deka’s arrest, her parents took him away to their ancestral home in Nalbari. “He does come occasionally to meet his mother but it has been a long time since he saw his father,” a jail source added.

Abhimanyu will not remember anything about it but it was just after his birth that his mother was first arrested from the Jaslok Hospital in Mumbai on August 23, 1996. It was her arrest which had opened a can of worms with police first getting wind about big tea companies in Assam providing large amount of funds to Ulfa.

Deka was released on bail in 1998 but was re-arrested in 2003 from Phulbari in Garo Hills of Meghalaya while trying to slip into Bangladesh.

When Abhimanyu was brought to Guwahati from Mumbai after his mother’s arrest, he was lovingly named “Ulfa puwali”, “young one of Ulfa”, by police personnel assigned to look after him at Jalukbari police station in Guwahati.

The police claim that Hazarika, now in his late forties, and Deka married after they joined the outfit and found a common cause.