Ex-minister missing from May 2004!

Lalit Parmar Who Went To Witness Manmohan’s Swearing-In As PM Is Yet To Return
Vijaysinh Parmar TNN
Himmatnagar (Sabarkantha): Anjana Parmar spends most of her time near the telephone. Every time it rings, she hopes it is a call from her husband Lalit Parmar. Parmar, a former deputy minister for prohibition and Harijan welfare from 1980 to 1985 in the Madhavsinh Solanki government, has been missing since May 20, 2004. He left home telling everyone that he was going to New Delhi to witness the swearing-in of Manmohan Singh as the prime minister and see if his political fortunes could change for the better now that there was a Congress government at the Centre. That was the last his friends and family saw or heard of him. When he didn’t call up home for a week, his family telephoned Gujarat Bhavan in New Delhi, where he normally used to stay, to check his whereabouts. But the guest house officials said there was no room booked for Parmar in recent months and that nobody had seen him of late. Ten days later, a missing report was filed with the police in Himmatnagar and the news was splashed across newspapers with his photograph. Parmar was a popular person in politics and was seen as a senior Dalit leader when he went missing at the age of 64. He had even written an autobiography and couple of other books on human rights in a democracy. “He was someone who could not have had any enemies. A simple soul at heart, he was loved by everyone around him and people at large,” says close friend Karsanbhai Makwana. Parmar’s son, Sanjay, who is a fashion designer in Ahmedabad, was to get married in the middle of 2004. The marriage was postponed in the hope that Parmar would return. Finally, he got married in 2006 and the wedding invitation card was published beforehand in Gujarati newspapers in the hope that Parmar would read it and return. “Although he was not a very religious person, we searched ashrams across India thinking that he may have turned into a sadhu,” says Anjana. She does not believe he could be dead. “Someday, my husband will come back,” she says.