Ham radio operators at Gangasagar help missing elderly man unite with family
Sagar Island: An elderly person who went missing at the Gangasagar Mela was united with his family members after ham radio operators successfully managed to trace his family members in Uttar Pradesh.
Ram Gopal Yadav (55), a resident of Jhala village in Uttar Pradesh, was found lying unconscious at Road number one leading towards Kapil Muni temple on Sunday afternoon.
"The disaster management team noticed Yadav lying on the road and immediately informed us. With the help of the district magistrate of South 24-Parganas Dr P Ulaganathan, we shifted him to a temporary hospital set up at the Gangasagar Mela venue," Ambarish Nag Biswas, custodian and secretary of West Bengal Radio Club (WBRC), an organisation of ham radio enthusiasts in the state said.
Yadav came alone to Gangasagar Mela on a bus on Saturday. He was scheduled to leave for his hometown in an Uttar Pradesh bound bus on Monday.
"After talking with Yadav for around one-and-half hour, we came to know his address and then contacted his local police station through our ham radio team in Uttar Pradesh. Then we contacted his son who was working in the field. His family did not file any missing FIR. We traced the bus operator and detained the bus that had already left for Kolkata from the lot 8 ferry ghat," pointed out Biswas.
"The unconscious 55-year-old patient was brought to the hospital by the ham radio team on Sunday afternoon. He was given necessary medical treatment and is conscious now. We are releasing him after signing a bond," said Madhumita Ghosh, a nurse at the temporary hospital situated at the Gangasagar Mela venue.
Yadav, along with the ham radio team, was shifted from the temporary hospital to the lot 8 ferry ghat via ambulance. The team members safely escorted him to the Uttar Pradesh bound bus that left from lot 8 ferry ghat. Radio amateurs use a variety of voice, text, image, and data communications modes and have access to frequency allocations throughout the radio frequency spectrum and it enables communication across a city, region, country, continent, the world, or even into space.