Amateur radio helps TN woman lost in West Bengal reunite with family

Amateur radio, quintessentially a geeky hobby, has come to the rescue of Visalakshi, a 35-year-old woman from Tamil Nadu who had puzzled doctors at a West Bengal hospital for four years for her inability to recall a shred of information about her life.

In a few days, Visalakshi is all set to be united with her family in Kolkata, over 1,500 km away from her native Krishnapuram village in Tamil Nadu, thanks to a network of Ham radio operators or Hams _ spanning  the two states.

It was four years ago that she was brought in by the locals to Barasat District Hospital in North 24-Parganas district (about 30 km from state capital Kolkata) after they spotted her wandering in the area.

“She was unable to recall anything for long. She has been with us for four years and is under treatment as a psychiatry patient. We even arranged a translator as she was unable to communicate in Hindi or English. We also tried to contact the Tamil Nadu police but could not make much progress,” the hospital’s Superintendent Subrata Mondal told IANS.

But, as her memory improved, Visalakshi began to plead with Mondal to contact her family.

“Once her condition improved and she seemed to recollect pieces of information, we decided to try out Ham,” Mondal said, especially as the police seemed of little help. “We approached the West Bengal Radio Club (Amateur Club) and provided a video recording of Visalakshi talking about herself,” Mondal said.

Led by Ambarish Nag Biswas of the club, a team of around nine Hams hooked up with their counterparts in Tamil Nadu. They made the link through EchoLink, a popular app. This software allows licensed amateur radio stations to communicate with one another over the Internet, using streaming-audio technology.

Biswas explained that Hams in India contact with each other around 9 15 pm every day. “We have many updates. Our first one will be about medical or traffic emergency. The plight of the woman was conveyed to the Chennai Hams,” said Biswas.

Interpretation of Visalakshi’s data was done by one of our licensed Hams, T Gopinath, a research scholar, said Biswas. “What followed sounds like something out of a sci-fi thriller. Only it 

was real.”

P  Kalyanasundaram, a Ham operator as well as professor of electronics and communication engineering in Erode’s Nandha Engineering College, picked up the emergency transmission and swung into action, alerting other Hams across the state.

“It was a mix of ham radio and mobile communication and finally the information reached a VAO who managed to locate the woman’s brother,” Kalyanasundaram told IANS from Erode. Visalakshi spoke to her brother Damodharan and recognised him. Now, he is gearing up to travel to Bengal. In a barely discernible mix of Hindi and English, he told IANS: “I am going to meet my sister.”