05 October,2011 08:11 AM IST | | Akela
48-yr-old Ramanand Yadav, who had been searching for his wife and 5 daughters who had abandoned him, died a loner's death in an auto rickshaw in Miraj, Sangli district
Ramanand Yadav's frantic search for the family members who marooned him over a disagreement over where to settle will never come to fruition.
The 48-year-old died last Friday, alone and melancholy. A resident of Worli, he died a loner's death in an auto rickshaw at Miraj in Sangli district on September 30.
His death is being attributed to the separation from his family, which brought him unbearable suffering and, possibly, a heart attack.
Yadav's body was discovered by Anil Vadgave, the rickshaw's driver. It was after searching Yadav's body for identification that Vadgave found a Mumbai-based journalist's visiting card on him.
Vadgave then called him up, and asked him to inform Yadav's family of his death.
However, when the journalist visited Yadav's house last Saturday, he found that the door was locked.
"I was informed by an auto rickshaw driver about Yadav's sad demise. However, my attempt to inform his family proved futile since his house's door was locked and no one knows where they are," said the journalist.
The desertion
Yadav's familyu00a0-- wife and five daughtersu00a0-- had clandestinely parted ways with him after he expressed his desire of settling down permanently at his native place of Balrampur district in Uttar Pradesh.
MiD DAY had published ('Man hunts for family which is running away from him', August 9) of Yadav's misfortunes, after his family deserted him.
Yadav had informed his family that he had booked railway tickets for July 23 to go to Balrampur to look for a prospective groom for Laxmi, his eldest, he had told MiD DAY. The idea, as it turned out, had not gone down well with the family members.
On July 15, Yadav was in for a rude shock. He discovered that the entire family had deserted him.
A note in Laxmi's handwriting that the family had left behind, read, "Papa, chinta mat karna. UP jane se achcha hai ki hum kahi aur settle ho jaye (Papa, don't worry. Rather than settling in UP, it's better we go somewhere else)."
After searching for his family at various ashrams, Yadav had registered a missing person's complaint with Worli police on July 18.
But the family approached the police and said that they had left of their own volition, and did not want to disclose their whereabouts to Yadav.
Ever since, Yadav was on the lookout for his closest of kin, a search that culminated in his demise.
The missing family
In his happier times, Yadav lived with his wife, Shanti Devi (38) and daughters Laxmi (21), Meera (19), Anuradha (16), Sharda (14) and Gayatri (7) at Prem Nagar in Worli.
