NEW DELHI, June 29: When Indian soldier Arif Ahmed returns home after four years in a Pakistani jail as a prisoner of war he will find that his world has turned upside down, it was reported on Tuesday.
Ahmed, an infantryman with the Bombay Engineering Regiment, was declared an absconder by the army after he went missing in the Kargil conflict between the Indian forces and Pakistan-abetted intruders in Jammu and Kashmir in June 1999, NDTV television network reported.
But four years after he went missing, Ahmed wrote to his relatives in a northern Indian village from a jail in Rawalpindi to let them know he was alive and a PoW. In the four years that he was in jail, his heartbroken mother passed away with the belief her son had died in the conflict.
She also got her daughter-in-law, Ahmed's wife, married again. Ahmed has said he may be returning soon and his delighted family is preparing for his homecoming. But they have not let him know of his mother's death or his wife's remarriage fearing he may not be able to handle the emotional trauma. -dpa
