Imphal man, who came back from Mumbai, found hanging

IMPHAL: Nobody had heard of Khomdram Gambhir Singh since he went missing from his Imphal home in 1978. All efforts of his family members to track him proved futile and there was little hope that he was alive as 40 years had passed.
But the unthinkable happened in April, 2018, when Khomdram’s family came across a YouTube video uploaded by fashion designer Firoze Shakir. In the footage, Khomdram was seen singing an old Hindi song on the streets of Mumbai. He was brought back to his Khumbong residence in Imphal West the same month and reunited with his family. But Khomdram always wanted to be in the Maximum City and, perhaps, missed the life there. He was found hanging under a bridge near his home on Thursday. He was 72.
But what drove Khomdram to take such an extreme step. Though the answer is still not clear, TOI found out that he missed Mumbai a lot.
“We are totally in the dark. We are shocked. My tachou (eldest brother) stayed happily with all our family members after he was brought back by the state police from Mumbai after four decades. We served him delicious food, gave pocket money and dealt with him lovingly,” Khomdram Kullachandra, younger brother of Gambhir, told his reporter.
“Tachou, nevertheless, had asked us to give him some money for going back to Mumbai. He sometimes jokingly said he wanted to live in Mumbai. He even abortively attempted to move once but we intervened and stopped him last year,” recalled Kullachandra, a farmer.
Khomdra’s last rites were performed on Thursday evening at the local crematorium.
General secretary of Imphal West Students’ Club (IWSC), Khumbong Atom Samarendra said, “We didn’t expect that he would take such an extreme step to end his life. After his return, he was a happy man. We saw him chatting with his local friends at Khumbong market.”
Khomdram has two brothers and four sisters and they belong to a poor family. According to Kullachandra, Khomdram married a woman from their neighbourhood in 1978 but they separated just three months later.
Two months thereafter, he left home without informing anyone. Khomdram had also served in the Manipur Rifles for seven years before switching to agricultural work, he said.