Tribal woman from Agartala returns four years after her funeral

Four years after the last rites were performed, a tribal housewife has returned home from neighbouring Bangladesh. Chitralekha Jamatiya, a mother of two children and a resident of Hadrai village in West Tripura district was missing since 2002 and returned home yesterday through Akhaura check post.

After a futile three-year-long search by family members, her husband performed last rites according to the customary systems of Jamatiya tribe in Tripura and married another woman. The uncle of the untraced woman, Khagendra Jamatiya, a conductor of Dhaka-Agartala bus, Maitree, heard that a tribal woman of Tripura was sheltered in a home in Dhaka.

Jamatiya one day went to see her in the home run by Bangladesh National Women's Law years Association (BNWLA) and found that the woman was his niece. "In 2006, I went to the home in Dhaka and found that
the woman was Chitralekha. She might had crossed the border and entered Bangladesh by mistake due to her suffering from psychiatric problems," he told reporters today.

On his application and due to initiatives of Tripura Women's Commission, Ministry of External Affairs took up the matter with Bangladesh and Chitralekha was allowed to return to Agartala.