From mental hosp, 4 go back to Nepal

Kolkata: In a cross-border effort, four Nepali nationals who spent years in Indian mental health institutions were recently repatriated to their homes — two escorted back by social workers, and two reunited after families traced and retrieved them.The individuals were admitted to govt facilities including Lumbini Park Mental Hospital, Berhampore Mental Hospital and Calcutta Pavlov Hospital. Despite being stable, they remained institutionalised for a long time due to the absence of identity verification, cross-border coordination and repatriation mechanisms.The repatriation process in collaboration with hospital authorities and local communities in Nepal was facilitated by Anjali, a city-based mental health NGO. Two of the individuals were accompanied by Anjali's social workers and successfully reintegrated into their families in remote districts of Mahottari and Dhanusha. The process involved intensive home tracing, verifying identities and rebuilding contact with families who had, in some cases, presumed their relatives dead.For the remaining two, home tracing enabled families to travel to India and take their relatives back from the hospitals.