He screams when he is hungry, but no one is there to feed him. He can’t sleep properly and is in a pitiable condition. He has got two sons and a daughter, but at such a crucial age, there is no one to look after him.

This is the plight of octogenarian Gurbhajan Singh, who is locked alone in a house in Mooran Wali
Gali, Patiala, for the past five years.

However, the matter came to light when residents of the area recently approached the Kotwali Police and urged the authorities to allow them to shift the old man to some old age home.

“Gurbhajan’s son and a daughter are settled abroad and the other son resides in Patiala. We have requested his son to take him out of the house, but to no avail,” said the residents.

“The kin of Gurbhajan shifted to Patiala some five years back. Since then he is living an inhuman life in the locked house,” said the residents while speaking to The Tribune.

Gurbhajan’s only company is his neighbours, who sometimes talk to him to ensure that he is medically fit. The only time they come to see him is during evenings, when he comes near the gate of the house to eat the food left by his kin. And many a times, he screams of hunger because animals had eaten the food.

Meanwhile, his immediate neighbour Rajinder Kumar and Parminder Kumar said he often banged doors during the night shouting that he was hungry.

“We have to give him food to pacify him,” they said, adding that Gurbhajan’s kin keep food for him once a day only.

The conditional of the old man could be gauged from the dirty clothes which he is wearing. As in this weather he was wearing two sweaters. With uncombed hairs, unusual body language, people felt that he was mentally unstable but if someone was caged in a house from past so many years, his conduct would, obviously be like that of Gurbhajan, opined a majority of the residents.

However, the claims of the residents proved to be true when TNS spoke to him as not only Punjabi, Gurbhajan was well versed with English. He said he was educated and had served as a manager in a prestigious firm and then quietly went away.