Bellary, Karnataka: From a dramatic saga that could pass for a film script, a 70-year-old woman has linked up with her family in Karnataka’s Bellary district, 25 years after they have performed her funeral rites.
Sakamma, who suffered from mental health issues, disappeared from her home in the Kenchina Bandi village, leaving behind her husband, Nagesh, and four children. She mysteriously made her way to Mandi, Himachal Pradesh, where she lived in poverty until 2018, when local authorities sent her to Banghrotu old-age home.
The moment came on the 18th of December when Assistant Deputy Commissioner Rohit Rathour visited the care home. During the visit, he discovered that Sakamma could only speak Kannada, so he reached out to SDM Netra Maiti, who is a Karnataka native. Thanks to a translation service provided by them, the officials managed to get the story from Sakamma, and they linked it to the authorities in Karnataka.
“We coordinated with the officials of the Karnataka government to find her family, who were under the impression she was dead for many years,” said the Deputy Commissioner of Mandi. “The family had carried out the funeral rites after mistakenly identifying a body that was found mutilated in an accident as Sakamma’s.”
The account of the story turned more emotional when the Karnataka government officials landed in Mandi to bring Sakamma back home. Vikram, Bodhraj, and Lakshmi, who were her three remaining children, were emotional at the airport reunion. “We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw our mother,” Vikram said, with his voice choking with feelings.
Sakamma, who is now a grandmother, lives with mental health issues and only speaks of her “small children,” who she does not know are parents already. Her memory of her children is like a frozen time of 25 years ago, thus making the reunion both happy and painful at the same time.
The successful gathering of the family was made possible thanks to the efforts of state officials from both Himachal Pradesh and Karnataka, especially the IPS probationer Ravi Nandan, who was instrumental in the documentation of Sakamma’s case through the video recordings that were vital in the process of identification.
This very unusual story about the loss of and reunion with a missing person is a vivid reminder of the problems involved with interstate cooperation in missions. For the family in Bellary, it’s simply a miracle—a mother they had mourned for a quarter-century has come back, just in time for the holidays.