Husband back from Pak jail,wife now married to his brother

Shambhoo Ram was among the 17 Indians freed by Pakistan last week and is now admitted to the Institute of Mental Hospital in Amritsar,where doctors have diagnosed him as suffering from schizophrenia. Shambhoo Ram’s elder brother Ram Chander has gone to Amritsar to bring him back.

In 2004,Gudiya of Meerut had shot to national limelight after she was ordered by the panchayat to go back to her first husband,who had returned from Pakistan after disappearing during the Kargil war. She had re-married in the meantime,and was pregnant with her second husband’s child. Her story becoming a media spectacle,Gudiya soon passed away.

In Phool Kumari’s case too,it’s the elders who decided she should marry Rajeshwar. “They said that Shambhoo would never return because Pakistan does not release any Indian,” she says.

What happens next is also not likely to be her decision. Rajeshwar says if Shambhoo is mentally sound,and wants his family back,he will not stand in the way. “I will marry again,” he says. Phool Kumari herself has “left it to God”.

When Phool Kumari married Shambhoo,he worked in a private firm in Delhi. Not long after,he left the job and returned to his Lakhmipur village in Kushinagar district to work on the family’s fields. A year on,Phool Kumari gave birth to a girl.

But the land was too small for the joint family of five brothers. Shambhoo went into depression and started “behaving abnormally”. He would often leave the house,saying that he was going for work and return after 10-15 days. One day in 2005,he left home but did not return. Two years later,the Local Intelligence Unit (LIU) informed the family that he was lodged in Lahore Central Jail in Pakistan. It was a shock.

The family wrote to the Prime Minister,Foreign Minister and Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh,requesting them to get Shambhoo back from Pakistan,but without luck. Convinced that he would never return,the elders said Rajeshwar should marry Phool Kumari and take care of her and her daughter.

Rajeshwar,who is the youngest of the brothers,says he was working in Ludhiana when he got to know that Shambhoo was imprisoned in Pakistan.

“I returned home only to make sure that the family did not panic. About two years ago,I was compelled by the village elders to marry Phool Kumari,who is two years older than me. Initially I was not ready,but I agreed when everyone said Shambhoo will never return,” says Rajeshwar.

A few months after the marriage,the ancestral property was divided between the brothers. Shambhoo’s share was given to Phool Kumari.

“I do farming on Shambhoo’s field also. I treat his daughter Maya,who is now six years’ old,as my own,” says Rajeshwar.