Bijapur: A woman in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur walked through dense forest on a stretch for four days to bring back her husband from the clutches of the Maoists.
Santhosh Kattam (48) is a constable attached to Bhopalpatnam police station here. He was abducted from Gorana village earlier on May 4 when he had ventured out of the house to buy grocery.
When his wife Sunita Kattam, learnt that her husband has been abudcted by the Maoists and when police too did not do enough to find her husband, that is when she decided to help herself.
Without wasting any further time, she sought help of a local journalist named Ganesh Mishra on May 6 and on the same day she, along with her 14-year-old daughter, scribe Ganesh Mishra and a few villagers entered the forest area to find Santhosh Kattam.
Hailing from Sukma district, a hotbed of Maoist activites, Sunita knew a lot about the armed men and Ganesh Mishra only came as a big support for her at the time of crisis.
She left her two other children with their grandmother at their house in Bijapur Police Line.
Maoists held a “Jan-adalat” (kangaroo court) to decide Santosh’s fate on May 11. That was when Sunita could see her husband for the first time in six days.
“The villagers and I persuaded Maoists to release him,” she told Indiatoday.
It is said that the Maoists released Kattam on one condition that he would not continue to work in the police department.
“This is for the first time the Rebels had set free police personnel from a Jan Adalat — something very rare”, said Journalist Ganesh Mishra, who in 2011 facilitated the release of four jawans from the captivity of the Left-wing extremists.
