BHOPAL: The family of a labourer from Umaria district of Madhya, who was kidnapped by Maoists in Chhattisgarh last Friday, had no clue he had been abducted until TOI called them on Monday.
Hostage Anand Yadav's uncle Rajju Yadav told TOI: "We had no information about any abduction. It is from you that we are hearing about it. Anand has two sons, a 5-year-old and another who will turn 1 in March."
Anand, 30, and engineer Ashok Pawar, who is also from MP, were abducted from a bridge construction site on the Indravati river in Chhattisgarh's Bijapur district on February 11. There is no trace of them.
Ashok hails from Babai in Hoshangabad district and Anand from Dhatura village in Umaria. Ashok's wife Sonali and their two daughters have released a video appeal to the Maoists to release him. According to sources, she has gone into the Bastar jungles to free her husband.
However, Anand's family, according to his uncle, knew nothing of the abduction.
Engineer spoke to his wife, kids five days ago
We have no such information. Anand had gone to Chhattisgarh to work on a bridge project, around 200km from Bilaspur, on February 3. He has been working on the same site for nearly two years now and had recently come home," said his uncle Rajju Yadav, 58.
The mobile phone network is extremely poor at the construction site in Bijapur, said Rajju. "He has to climb up from the construction site to be able to make any calls. It is only when he calls that we get to talk. The last time he spoke with his wife was around five days ago (a day before his kidnap)," he said. tnn
