Lost, found, lost again: Jharkhand man refuses to take mother back as she is Christian

KOLKATA: An elderly woman who got lost more than two decades ago, and has been staying at a south Kolkata shelter home, was finally linked to her family at a village in Jharkhand. But her son refused to take her back because she is a Christian.

Madan Besra, who lives in the same house from where Sushila Murmu disappeared after her husband’s death, insisted that her mother embrace Hinduism to gain acceptance into her family, a demand the septuagenarian roundly rejected.


It was her religion — Murmu had converted to Christianity before her marriage — that drove her out of Dahupagar village, in Jharkhand’s Godda district, in the first place. Villagers said neighbours refused to allow a Christian woman to stay in their midst after her husband died.

With much of her memories wiped out, Murmu has little recollection of how he landed in Kolkata. She was spotted by a member of Missionaries of Charity in 2001 and taken to a shelter home run by the order. Over the decades, she accepted the shelter as her home but often missed her family and kept talking about her husband.

She could recall that her husband was a Hindu and a farmer by profession.

An employee at the home narrated the woman’s ordeal to an amateur radio operator in Kolkata. “We circulated her picture in our network and she was traced to Dahupagar village under Poriahat police station in Jharkhand’s Godda. We got in touch with her son, Madan Besra, but were shocked at his response. He refused to accept his mother because she is a Christian,” said Ambarish Nag Biswas of West Bengal Radio Club.

The mother and the son spoke over a video call, their first interaction after at least 25 years. Recounting the conversation, Murmu said, “He told me that he would not take me back unless I changed my religion. But I will not leave my religion. That was my last word with him.”

Nag Biswas quoted Besra as saying, “I told her that I am a Hindu and she should get converted now. My father and grandfather were Hindus. He (his father) might have married a Christian but he never changed his religion.”

‘There’ll be trouble if she doesn’t convert’
Besra told amateur radio operators that his father started wearing a cross after he got married, but that did not make him a Christian. “If she doesn’t get converted into Hinduism, there will be trouble at home,” Nag Biswas of West Bengal Radio Club quoted Besra as saying.

The mukhiya of Liladha panchayat, Vikesh Kumar, came to know about Murmu’s fate from the radio operators. “Dahupagar is next to my village and I know Madan Besra. But I did not know that his mother had left home,” Kumar said.

The officer-in-charge of Poriahat police station, Mahavir Pandit, said, “I wasn’t aware of the incident. I will visit the village and talk to her son.”