Freedom beckons after 44 years

FIRST, IT was thirty plus. Now, it?s 40 plus. Jagjivan Yadav of Faizabad spent 38 years in jail without trial and was freed two days ago. Shankar Dayal of Unnao district has topped that. He has been in confinement for over 44 years, and is likely to be freed soon.

FIRST, IT was thirty plus. Now, it’s 40 plus. Jagjivan Yadav of Faizabad spent 38 years in jail without trial and was freed two days ago.

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Shankar Dayal of Unnao district has topped that. He has been in confinement for over 44 years, and is likely to be freed soon.

Shankar’s son, too is 44. The two met for the first time-ever at Varanasi Mental Hospital on Wednesday.

A resident of Masvasi village in Unnao, Shankar Dayal was arrested for a minor offence in that district in 1961 and admitted to the mental hospital on April 1962.

Quite naturally, when he came face to face with son Saligram at the mental hospital on Wednesday, he did not know who he was meeting. It was wife Chandrawati who filled him in on the missing pages of his life.

She told him that when he was under detention, she gave birth to Saligram.
Taking her husband for dead, Chandrawati began living a widow’s life, but later married her brother-in-law. The couple went on to have three daughters and two sons.

Her long years of suffering finally seemed to come to an end when the family got news of Shankar Dayal at the mental hospital. Along with sons Saligram and Rajkumar, she went to meet him.

Mental Hospital director Dr PK Bhargava said it was his initiative that had kindled hope of Shankar Dayal’s release, adding that the process for his freedom had been speeded up and a final nod was awaited from court.