Over 2 years after Pune man goes missing, his family see reunion hopes — in an ad

It was one such advertisement that took Tambe’s son, Bharat, by surprise on Thursday. He says a friend sent him a screenshot of a WhatsApp status someone on his contacts list had posted. “I saw the screenshot and couldn’t believe it. It was my father in the ad of the Teerth Darshan Yojana,” said Bharat, who runs an eatery in Shikrapur, about 25 kilometres from Varude village, where he lives.

Saying his family had grown sceptical of Tambe’s well-being after he remained untraceable for three years, Bharat urged CM Shinde “to oblige me by finding my father and reuniting him with us.” “Now we know for sure that he is alive and is well. Our hopes of a reunion are high now,” he said.

The police have already begun searching for Tambe. Bharat lodged a missing complaint on Saturday night after the cops approached him, said Inspector Deepratan Gaikwad of Shikrapur police station. “The family had never lodged a missing report about Dnyaneshwar Tambe in the past,” Gaikwad said.

Deputy Superintendent of Police Prashant Dhole said, “When we interacted with the family members, they told us that Dnyaneshwar Tambe has left home multiple times in the past and he used to return home on his own. Last time he left home during the Covid-19 outbreak in December 2021. But the family members believed that he would return again. So they did not inform the police or lodged any missing report about him before.”

“(Tambe’s) family members said that after leaving home, he often visited places of pilgrimage. They suspect he now went to the wari procession where his photograph may have been clicked. We have formed teams to search for him now,” Dhole added.

According to Bharat, his father had a habit of leaving home without informing his family but would always return “within a fortnight or sometimes a couple of months”. The last time, however, when Tambe did not come back for several months, Bharat started looking for him, contacting friends and relatives, but in vain.

After the advertisement, traced to the Shiv Sena’s Instagram handle, Bharat contacted a local journalist and the news soon went viral, even drawing in the Opposition Congress, which criticised the state government.

Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar, in an X post, said it was “a crime to use a photograph of a citizen in this manner illegally on the advertisement, without seeking their permission”. Slamming the Mahayuti government, he said its schemes as well as advertisements were “hollow”.

The state government denied it issued the advertisement featuring the missing man. “The state government has not posted this ad on any of its social media accounts. It has also not been issued via the government in any form,” said a statement issued through the Director General of Information and Public Relations.

The Shiv Sena has now deleted the post. Party spokesperson Naresh Mhaske said: “As far as I am aware, the advertisement was issued by the government. But if it was our social media team that designed the post, we would surely try to trace the source of the photo so that the elderly man can be traced.”

Meanwhile, the police are also trying to find out the source of Tambe’s photograph in the advertisement.