New Delhi: Everyone wishes the best for Father Tom Uzhunnalil on his 58th birthday but no one knows if the greetings would reach the Salesian priest who was abducted in Syria more than five months ago.
From priests and nuns to relatives and well-wishers, everyone has been praying for the release of the Indian priest ever since he was abducted from a Missionaries of Charity old-age home in Yemen on March 4.
The priest’s ancestral house in Kottayam is locked up and his elder brother, who had returned to the home after hearing about the abduction, has gone back to Ranchi.
“There is still no clear news about the father. Even the last message we received from the government was that they are trying but it’s difficult to evacuate people from trife-torn Yemen,” advocate Kunjaugusty, a second cousin of the priest, told Onmanorama.
Fr Uzhunnalil was kidnapped from Aden on March 4, after an attack on the old-age home that left four nuns and several others dead. The Indian government has always maintained that the priest was safe. Reports in July suggested that three of his abductors had been nabbed and they had admitted to kidnapping the priest.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India and people’s representatives, along with Father Uzhunnalil’s relatives in Kottayam, have met prime minister Narendra Modi and external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj several times to press the government to try for his release.
The external affairs ministry has hinted that the priest could have been taken to some other country from Yemen. The sources, however, are clueless about his whereabouts or the conditions of the terrorists.