Amateur radio club traces Bengal woman, presumed dead for over a decade, in Rajasthan

 Secretary of West Bengal Radio Club, Ambarish Nag Biswas, said he recently received a call from a person, claiming to be a journalist, who narrated about a woman wanting to speak to her father

PTI, Calcutta, 10.09.23 : A woman from West Bengal, presumed dead for more than 15 years, has been found alive and happily married in Rajasthan, and she will soon be reunited with her family, thanks to the efforts of an amateur radio club here.

Secretary of West Bengal Radio Club, Ambarish Nag Biswas, said he recently received a call from a person, claiming to be a journalist, who narrated about a woman wanting to speak to her father.

“This person, confused after receiving the phone call from the woman, did not know what to do, and sought help from the radio club,” Biswas said.

Its members swung into action and managed to speak to the woman over phone, and traced her location in Rajasthan, he said.

“The woman was a teenager when she reportedly got lost, and now she is around 27 years old,” Biswas said.

“We contacted all our members with the description of the village the woman Najmunar Khatun (now Rupa Mondal) had given to the journalist along with her father’s name, and finally we were able to locate her family in the North 24 Parganas district’s Minakhan area,” he said.

The radio club’s members then sent the woman’s picture to her family members, and connected her with them through video call.

“My daughter now lives in Patona village in Rajasthan’s Karauli district, and is married to a Hindu man. She is now the mother of three children,” her father Zakir Tarafdar told PTI over phone.

Tarafdar said his family has no problem over the fact that she got married to a Hindu man.

“I am happy that my daughter is alive and has a family. We will visit her in a couple of days and are making arrangements for the trip,” he said.

It is not clear how she went missing during her second visit to New Delhi, while working there, her father said.

“I cannot say whether my daughter was a victim of trafficking,” Tarafdar said.

The radio club’s members in West Bengal also got in touch with its counterparts in Rajasthan, and sought help from the local Mahabirji police station to find out more about the woman and her husband.

The woman’s husband, Yogesh Kumar Naharwal, told PTI that he had found her sobbing at Nizamuddin Railway Station in New Delhi around 12 years ago, and she could not provide any information from where she hailed.

Later, she accompanied him to Rajasthan.

“My mother and I have taken good care of her. I married her on my mother’s insistence... We have three children now. I am a simple man, have a small piece of land where I grow crops. I am a contractor, too,” Naharwal said.