Illustration for representational purpose

JAMSHEDPUR: A 42-year-old labourer from Jharkhand, who travelled about 600km on his bicycle looking for his missing wife, was finally reunited with her in West Bengal 's Kharagpur last week.

In the quest to find his wife, Manohar Nayak - from Musabani's Baligoda village - pedalled 25km daily across 65 villages for 24 days. His wife Anita went missing on January 14 from her parents' home in Kumrasol village, where she had gone for Makar Sankranti.

"When she didn't return for two days, I filed a police complaint with Musabani and Dumaria police stations," said Manohar, who works as a daily wage labourer in Odisha. When cops couldn't provide any leads, Manohar decided to travel across the state to search for Anita, who is mentally unstable and unable to speak properly. "I repaired my rusty bicycle and started travelling from one village to another, not knowing how much distance I had covered," said Manohar. When he couldn't locate Anita even after an extensive search, Manohar approached local newspapers to publish her photo in the missing persons' column.

His efforts finally bore fruit when some people who had seen the photo found Anita sitting at a roadside eatery in Kharagpur and informed cops. Kharagpur police sent photos over WhatsApp to their Musabani counterparts, who in turn summoned Manohar for his wife's identification.

"Without wasting time, we asked Manohar to rush to Kharagpur with both their Aadhaar cards. The couple was reunited on February 10," Musabani SHO Suresh Linda said. The couple returned home on February 11.

