Bidyadhar Patri (right) with Hamid Ansar Barni, the Pakistani federal minister for human rights, at their Chandigarh meeting in April. Picture by Soumen Bhattacharjee

Bidyadhar Patri had thought his father was dead, until a chance glimpse of his photograph in an Oriya newspaper five years ago.

The south Calcutta priest has since been spending most of his waking hours writing letters to officials in Delhi and meeting anyone who can help in getting his father freed from the Pakistan jail in which he has spent the last 47 years.

The closest Bidyadhar came to being reunited with his father Ananda Patri, a sepoy in the Barrackpore-based infantry regiment when he left for the Indo-Pak frontier to fight the 1965 war, was earlier this year. Based on assurances from the Indian and Pakistani diplomats he had been communicating with, the priest went to the Wagah border in February to receive his father, only to be told that Ananda was not among the prisoners of war to be freed that time. “What could I do but strive on? So I resumed my campaign instead of brooding,” Bidyadhar said.

The March release of Kashmir Singh, arrested in Pakistan for spying, after spending 35 years in different jails, rekindled Bidyadhar’s enthusiasm. He met Hamid Ansar Barni, the Pakistan federal minister for human rights, during his visit to Chandigarh in April and was assured that his father would be freed soon.

“I came here to discuss several cases, including that of Sarabjit Singh. I spoke to Bidyadhar about his father and will take it up at the highest level,” Barni had then told Metro over phone from Chandigarh.

Bidyadhar was only four when his father left home for the war. His name never appeared on the casualty list, but there was no information about him being captured either.

Left to fend for herself and her son, Ananda’s illiterate wife stopped trying to gather information about her missing husband after a taste of red tape. She died in the 1980 cyclone in Orissa and Bidyadhar migrated to Calcutta to make a living as a priest.

It was in February 2003 that Bidyadhar came to know his father was alive. “The Orissa government published a picture of my father in a Oriya newspaper, seeking information about our family. We got to know about it from a relative and after getting in touch with the Orissa government, we learnt that the picture was published in accordance with a directive from Delhi,” he said.

When Bidyadhar contacted the Union home ministry in March 2003, it asked the under secretary in the ministry of external affairs to arrange for Ananda’s repatriation to Orissa. The external affairs ministry wrote back saying that Ananda was jailed under the name of Naseem Gopal.

The latest hurdle in the way of Ananda’s release is Pakistani officials’ insistence that India identify him as a trespasser to Pakistan in 1999, but Bidyadhar isn’t giving up yet.