‘Unknown s/o unknown’ gets a name, after death

NEW DELHI: One July afternoon, a 33-year-old man lost his name on the Safdarjung flyover. For nine years, he wracked his mind to recall it, wrenched his guts to scream it out, but couldn’t. He died nameless last November.He would have remained ‘unknown s/o unknown’ forever in records, but for the perseverance of police who not only found out his name but also handed over his body to his family. Now, eight months later, the case is headed back to court, to finally give justice to Jeet Bahadur Basnet.It all went tragically wrong for Basnet on the afternoon of July 9, 2009. He was headed home to Majnu ka Tila when a Maruti 800 hit him on the flyover.Doctors at the AIIMS trauma centre saved his life but he lost his memory and speech. He had been found without any identifying document, so when the hospital discharged him after three weeks, police moved him into Shanti Niketan ashram, a shelter in south Delhi’s Asola village.He began his second life at the ashram as ‘Admission Number 22’. “He could not walk or speak for the first two weeks,” recalls Ancy Johnson, president of Shanti Niketan Social Welfare Society, who became his guardian.He was in bad shape and repeatedly suffered seizures, Johnson said. “However, gradually, he started walking and we hoped that he would start speaking as well.”When the accident case came up for hearing, Basnet couldn’t utter a word in court. The case went on for eight years until the driver of the car was acquitted in October 2017 for lack of evidence. In each hearing, Basnet tried hard to speak but failed.There was one word, though, that rose to his lips — Jeet. Was it his name? Basnet was referred to neurologists with the hope that he would recover his speech and testify.“He sometimes mumbled his first name, but we were not sure as there was no document to confirm it. He would cry in desperation as he wanted to speak but could not,” said Johnson. There were days when he tried to be communicative, and then weeks when he sank into silent despair. Staff at the ashram sometimes had to force him to eat when he was gloomy.When Johnson and her daughter taught him the alphabet, Basnet took to scribbling whole pages. Amid a jumble of letters, he often wrote ‘Malma Dhaulagiri’, but nobody guessed its meaning until after he died of pneumonia on November 2 last year.After SHO Anil Sharma’s team from Lodhi Colony police station sent the body for autopsy, ASI Munendra Singh, the investigating officer, began his search for Basnet’s family. Amid a pile of documents, the words ‘Malma Dhaulagiri’ shone like a beacon.Singh googled the words “and the results showed places around Nepal.” Enquiries with other Nepalese workers in the area confirmed that Malma Dhaulagiri was a village in central Nepal. The Nepal embassy then helped him contact the area’s administrative body, and after searching for a month, they found Basnet’s father Karan Bahadur, wife Pampha Devi, daughter and son. ‘Unknown s/o unknown’ finally had his proper name, and his body was handed over to his family for last rites.Family members told police that they had tried to contact Basnet but were unaware of his whereabouts. Basnet’s brother, who is in the Gorkha Regiment of the Indian Army, also tried to trace him in the capital, but eventually gave up.Two years after the accident case was closed, police have revived it by adding the section for causing death due to negligence, and filed a detailed accident report. A supplementary chargesheet will also be filed in the case.Police commissioner Amulya Patnaik has praised the effort by his officers, supervised by Joint CP (southern range) Devesh Srivastava.