Kendrapara: Basanti Sahu, a septuagenarian, has urged the Prime Minister and External Affairs Ministry to release her son Rabindra Sahu, 27, who is lodged in Kathmandu Central Jail.
Rabindra’s dream to provide a bright future to his poverty-stricken family took him to Nepal, but he ended up in jail. Back home his mother and family members have been spending sleepless nights thinking about him.
Sources said Rabindra, a resident of Rajnagar in Derabish block, had gone to Nepal to work as a plumber. He had returned home in 2011 after working there for two years.
Rabindra went back to Nepal after a year in Rajnagar, and took his younger brother Manas Sahu with him so that he too can work as a plumber. The brothers took a rented house in Sundhara in Kathmandu.
The local police nabbed Rabindra for allegedly sexually abusing a minor girl, a neighbour.
Rabindra was detained for one-and-a-half months at the Sundhara station and was later sent to Kathamandu Central Jail June 24, 2012.
Manas said, “I and my brother had spent about five days in our rented house after reaching Kathmandu. As our sister and brother-in-law were staying in the locality we visited them and after dinner we came back home. Next morning, the police knocked our door, and we came to know that a minor girl was sexually abused, and the woman had blamed my brother. The police arrested my brother and sent him to Kathmandu Central Jail June 24, 2012.”
Basanti said she has four daughters and three sons. The poor BPL family could not provide proper treatment to her husband who was suffering from cancer.
She said her third son Rabindra and younger son Manas had gone to Nepal in 2012 to work. “Poverty prevented us from going to Nepal and arrange a lawyer for Rabindra,” Basanti said.
Basanti sought the intervention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Ministry of External Affairs (North) through a petition filed through the MADAD portal in September.
K Neogi, Under Secretary (North), Union Ministry of External Affairs, asked Pranav Ganesh, the first secretary (Consular), Indian Embassy, Kathmandu, September 17 to look into the case of Rabindra Sahu, and to forward a status report.
A letter from the External Affairs Ministry came to Basanti. The MADAD consultant informed her that her son’s case is in court, and she was advised to seek legal remedies.
Meanwhile, Basanti told the Under Secretary of the Ministry of external affairs, that as she was poor she cannot appeal against the sentence imposed on her son Rabindra by a Kathmandu court.
She urged the External Affairs to provide legal assistance to her son to move the High Court.
PNN