Ramechhap, June 26:

A woman of Ramechhap’s Puranagaun VDC has appealed to all concerned to make public the whereabouts of her husband who had gone missing three years ago.

Thirty-two-year-old Pushpa Kumar Giri of Puranagaun VDC-6 had left for Kathmandu on August 4, 2003 for medical treatment. He, however, never returned home, his wife Meena told reporters today.

A team of 15-20 plainclothes policemen had arrested him on November 7, 2003 from a rented room at Bagbazaar in Kathmandu, Meena said.

“The owner of the house where he was staying in the capital has seen my husband being arrested by the policemen,” she said, adding that the whereabouts of her husband could not be known despite several requests to the National Human Rights Commission and human rights activists.

She said that Giri had also been earlier arrested by army men of the Bhairavnath battalion on June 4, 2002 from his rented room at Nayabazaar in Kathmandu. The army handed him over to the Hanumandhoka police office in the capital on September 20, she added.

He was detained there for 29 days before being transferred to the central jail for three months.

He was again brought to the Hanumandhoka police office on January 18, 2003 and set free on the condition that he show up in the office whenever called. Giri was physically and mentally tortured by the army while in detention, Meena said. “I appeal to all human rights activists, journalists and fellow countrymen to help make public his whereabouts,” she said.

She also made it clear that her husband was not associated with any political party. Meena, who married Giri in 1996, has two sons.