On the morning of March 4, 2016, Father Tom Uzhunnalil was praying in the chapel of an old age home in Aden, Yemen, where he was stationed, when he heard gun shots. He stepped outside and saw the security guards lying in a pool of blood. What followed remains etched in his memory - he was witness to the deaths of four nuns, two staff of the old age home and a young boy. “I thought my turn was next,” the 59-year-old Catholic priest told mediapersons in Bengaluru on Saturday.
However, it was not his turn, the men tied him up and put him in the boot of a car. He was shifted to four different places and spent 566 days in captivity, before he was released.
“It is due to the prayers of my well-wishers that I am alive. My captors did not ill-treat me. They fed me even when they were fasting,” said Father Uzhunnallil, who reached Bengaluru on Friday to meet priests of the congregation he belongs to, the Salesians of Don Bosco. Father Uzhunnalil spent 18 years in Karnataka, serving parishioners in Kolar Gold Fields, Hassan and Bhadravati.
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After no communication with the outside world for 18 months, Father Uzhunnalil is in a daze from the attention he has been getting since his release. He remains grateful to his countrymen who prayed for his return. “I heard from my family upon my return that Hindus were making poojas and Muslims were praying for me. I know and am sure everyone has prayed from all over the world for me,” he said.
Father Uzhunallil lost a lot of weight during his captivity, with his weight falling from 82 kg at the time of abduction to 55 kg. “I was not starved by my captors. The weight loss was due to uncontrolled diabetes,” he said. He had been on insulin prior to abduction and without access to it, he rapidly lost weight. However, his captors brought a doctor to attend to him and got him medicines to control diabetes.
The Don Bosco Provincial House held a thanksgiving service for the abducted priest on Friday. At the programme, State Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy extended a warm welcome to Father Uzhunnalil.
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The priest shared his experience of being in captivity, where he was confined to a small room with no one to speak to. His captors spoke Arabic and eventually he picked up a few words. “I lost all sense of time. When I reached Muscat after my release the first thing I asked was what day it was, and then I came to know I had been in captivity for 18 months,” he said.
A hero’s welcome awaits Fr. Tom Uzhunnalil when he arrives at his ancestral village Ramapuram on Sunday after a gap of two years.
Fr. Uzhunnalil’s ancestral house in the village had remained closed for so many months now. “We have spruced up the house,” said Thomas Uzhunnalil, his cousin. Fr. Uzhunnalil will spend the night along with his brother Mathew and sister Mary in his house.
( With inputs from Kottayam )