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Uttar Pradesh: Lost in fair, deaf & mute man found due to tattoo after 26 years | Lucknow News


LUCKY: This seems like a Manmohan Desai flick off. A deaf-mute young man who got lost 26 years ago at a fair is reunited with his family thanks to his tattooed arm. And this isn’t just a happy ending – it’s a happy beginning for a man who has suffered silently for nearly three decades.
Deaf and disabled since birth, Jilajit Singh Maurya, the youngest son of a well-to-do farming family, went missing on the outskirts of his village, Gothan, in Azamgarh in 1996. Then he is 35 years old.
“This happened one summer evening, June 1, 1996, when Jilajit went to see a fair near the village. He didn’t come back,” his grandson said, Chandrashekhar Maurya (age 46), teaches science to small classes in a public school in Azamgarh.
Jilajit’s father, Sohan Maurya, and the two brothers were distraught and inconsolable. His mother died in 1991.
“He wasn’t even mentally alert like the others. My grandfather cried for months when my father and uncle went to the neighboring counties to look for him. No trace of him. We even visited pilgrimage sites, gave alms to the poor, performed some rituals but all in vain,” said Chandrashekhar.
As the years have passed, people have come to terms with loss. Jilajit’s father passed away in 2011. The family has seen a generational change as Jilajit’s nephews and nieces get married and have children.
He is now mentioned in the past tense – the memory of a traumatic loss from which the family has since recovered. No one could have imagined even in their wildest dreams that he would one day return alive.
But he did.
At a barbershop in the Hatwa village of Raebareli, 260 kilometers west of Azamgarh, the village of pradhan Dilip Singh discovered an old man in bad condition, unable to speak or hear. Clues to his whereabouts, a ‘godna’ (an indigenous tattoo using natural dyes) on his arm, bearing his name and address, have faded. But ‘Maurya’ and ‘Azamgarh’ are still readable.
Kind Pradhan took him home, fed him and took a picture of his tattooed arm and posted it on Facebook. It was shared by his acquaintances and then theirs – until it reached one of the Maurya family relatives.
“On December 13, a teacher sent me a photo of an older person with a faint tattoo on his arm. It was taken from Facebook and posted by one person Shivendra Singh of the Amethyst,” Chandrashekhar said.
“Without thinking, I sent a text message to Shivendra Singh, who turned out to be the son of village pradhan Dilip Singh, and ran over to my dad to show him the photo,” he added.
When TOI talked to Shivendra, he said, “My father brought him home, fed him and called the doctor. Then we set out on a Herculean quest to find his family members.”
After Jilajit’s two older brothers confirmed his identity, Chandrashekhar and his younger brother who worked in the electricity department left for Amethi to bring their uncle back.
“I was 20 years old when he got lost. But I could recognize him immediately. When we bring him home, it’s like a festival in the village,” he said.
“My father and ‘Jilajit’ brother, Jamvant, in their 70s, started dancing when they saw their younger brother again after 26 years. My other uncle, Jilajit’s younger brother, asked us to prepare kheer and distribute it to the villagers,” said Chandrashekhar.
“My uncle has suffered enough. No one can know that pain because he can’t communicate. But we want to put all this aside and make sure he has a happy and fulfilling life,” he said.

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