Members of the 17-strong team that accompanied 29-year-old Captain Sanjit Bhattacharjee of the 7/8 Gorkha Rifles to the flooded area around the Indo-Pak border in Bhuj on April 20, 1997, say he stayed back with a sick soldier in the patrol, asking the others to carry on. But search parties sent out later to look for the two men found no trace of them.

Though the Indian Army has been repeatedly assuring the missing officer's Pune-based parents that all efforts are being made to trace Sanjit and the missing jawan, a spokesperson for the Pune-based Southern Command says matters need to be taken up with Pakistan at the Government level. ``There was flooding in the area at thattime and the Army feels the two men lost their way and strayed into Pakistan. The matter is being taken up by the Director General of Military Operations, Lt General I K Verma, with the DGMO in Pakistan but ``Pakistan has denied that these people are in their custody,'' says a senior staff officer.

For Sanjit's old parents who have been shuttling from one senior officer to another, knocking on the doors of various ministries, it has been a tortuous ordeal. ``His flight tickets were booked for April 22 last year and when an auto stopped at our house on April 23, I thought Sanjit had arrived,'' says 67-year-old Kamla Bhattacharjee, who believes her youngest son is alive and will return. A day later, the Bhattacharjees received a telegram from the Commanding Officer of 7/8 Gorkha Rifles saying their son was suspected to have been captured by Pakistanis while carrying out operational reconnaissance along the international border and that all efforts were being made to trace him. D Bhattacharjee, a retired civilengineer, had gone to Delhi to meet former Defence Minister Mulayam Singh and then prime minister I K Gujral but despite assurances from the two offices that the matter would be looked into, nothing seems to have been done.

``The Indian government which has a tendency to be week-kneed is apparently not taking up the case strongly enough. Unlike (other) nations which make a big noise if anything like this happens in their country to ensure that the citizen is returned unharmed, India tends to be subdued,'' says Col Anil Athale, former Director, War Studies, Ministry of Defence.

Cases of soldiers of neighbouring countries straying into each other's territories are not new but civilised countries acknowledge this and an exchange is effected. In 1980, more than a dozen soldiers of the Indian Army had strayed almost 40 km into China by mistake but the Chinese government returned them unharmed, he says.

``The DGMO has told me that the Defence Ministry can pressurise Pakistan when they speak face-to-face andthe matter can be cleared,'' says Bhattacharjee. But with changing governments and new ministers, the matter seems to have been put on the back burner even as the old man prepares to draft another letter to the new Prime Minister.