Muhammad Kamal, 35, who has been at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat Jail for the past 13 years, has a long wait ahead of him. His parents and some siblings are dead and the one alive says she has no recollection of him as she was a kid when he vanished. In fact, some siblings are in Pakistan but no one has a clue where they live.‘‘He is Kamal, I can recognise him from this photo. He has changed in all these years, but it is him. Allah, we thought he was dead,’’ cries an aged Saliha Begum, Kamal’s maami (aunt) at her house in a dusty Vaidnathwali Lane in Allahabad’s Jansenganj area.Emotion soon gives way to reason. ‘‘How can we bring him back to India now? We are not his parents or siblings? We have no idea of the procedures. With his two sisters and a brother, Fuzail, in Pakistan, it is they who should get him released there,’’ she says.She and her daughter, Seema Begum, lead us to Kamal’s sister, Rehana, who lives in Allahabad’s Akbarpur area. Rehana, 22, can’t recollect Kamal for she says she was too young when he went missing in 1992.‘‘I was a kid when Kamal went missing. My brother Sohail’s wife also stays with me now. I am not in touch with my other sisters and brother Fuzail in Pakistan,’’ she says.This trip has been full of disappointments for the Express team. First, it wasn’t easy to locate Saliha Begum. At the address given by the Home Ministry — 417, Vaidnathwali Gali, Jansenganj — we were told the house has been sold off.Later, Saliha recalled this house where the family had lived for decades changed hands six years back when Kamal’s father, Muhammad Fazil, a painter, died. Mother Hazra had died the year he went missing. Kamal was born with a mental handicap.It turns out to be a story of divided families. Muhammad Fazil had four brothers and all of them stayed in Pakistan. Saliha recalls that in 1990 six of his children had gone to Pakistan to meet their relatives and ended up staying there for two years — sisters Rizvana and Shahjana even got married there. While Kamal’s brothers, Sohail and Tufail, returned to India, leaving another brother, Fuzail, behind, Kamal just went missing at the border. The aunt is vague about the details.The family continued to be rocked by tragedy with Tufail dying in an accident and Sohail — also mentally handicapped —— vanishing mysteriously. ‘‘Muhammad Fazil died at the age of 90 and the house was sold off,’’ says Seema, who recollects meeting Kamal in their childhood.The Pakistan links have snapped and no one knows where their relatives live. ‘‘Perhaps, they will read your paper in Pakistan and get Kamal released,’’ says Saliha. That’s the thread of hope from which Kamal’s fate now hangs.
