NEW DELHI: Sohan Lal, a Jammu and Kashmir constable, who inadvertently crossed the border into Pakistan three years ago was handed over to Indian authorities at the Wagah border in Punjab on Thursday. Mr Lal's return ends a torturous wait for the 39-year-old's family back home in Jammu's RS Pura district.
The BSF made the announcement, declaring that Pakistan Rangers had handed over the police constable at Wagah border after persistent efforts by its officers.
Four Border Security Force guards had been suspended for negligence after it turned out that the constable, while working on his field along the International Border in RS Pura district, crossed over into Pakistan in May 2014.
His family - which had stated he was mentally disturbed - which was looking for him figured he had crossed over when they heard news that Punjab Rangers had caught him in the border area of Kujial Sialkot, about 90 km from Lahore.
Top BSF officials prompted reached out to their counterparts to secure his release but the Punjab Rangers pointed that they had already set the legal process in motion. He was later sent to the Lahore jail. But the BSF made it a point to press for his return at every meeting between commanders of the two border-guarding forces.
Over the next three years, Sohan Lal's family tracked the ups and downs in relations between the two countries; their hopes brightened when prime ministers of the two countries met or shook hands. On the day news got out that another Indian national, Kulbhushan Jadhav, had been sentenced to death by a military court, his father Garu Choudhary had told journalists that their hopes had come crashing down.
But all this didn't stop his 12-year-old daughter Anjali Choudhary from writing to government
leaders beginning from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Rajnath Singh to get her father back from Pakistan, safe.
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