NUWAKOT: A person who went missing during a decade long armed conflict, has returned home after 18 years.

Hopes had deserted his family members when Laxman Bhatta of Charghare-4 in Nuwakot district, suddenly lost contact in 1999.

For all these years, I had been working at a coal mine at Meghalaya of India, and could not send a letter nor did I have a mobile phone to make a call, Bhatta revealed to his family members.

The family had lost all hopes of finding him alive.

He has now returned with an Indian wife and a nine-year-old daughter, said his elder twin brother Ram Lal Bhatta.

"There was no environment to stay at our place during the intensity of the armed conflict in the country, " twin brother said adding "We had lost all hopes of finding the brother who went missing at a time when the security personnel had started to disturb our peace, but we are now happy that he has returned.

The twin brother Bhatta, who was with the then Maoist's People's Liberation Army (PLA), had filed applications at the Local Peace Committee and International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to search for his missing brother.

Upon returning to his village Bhatta was notified of his father Ved Prasad Bhatta's death in 2011.

Bhatta now plans to stay and get involved in agriculture and farming in the village.