Indian families search for 'PoWs'

By Damian Grammaticas
BBC South Asia correspondent, Delhi

Families have been campaigning for many years

A group of families from India are travelling to Pakistan on Friday to search jails for soldiers who vanished during the 1971 India-Pakistan war.

They believe more than 50 missing men are still alive and being held there.

The Pakistani side denies it is holding any Indian prisoners of war, but it has agreed to open its jails as part of an ongoing peace process.

For more than 35 years, one woman, Damayanti Vijay Tambay, has waited for her husband.

A fighter pilot, his aircraft never returned from a mission during the 1971 war.

Nirmal Kaur's husband vanished in fighting in Kashmir.

In all, 54 soldiers are still missing from that conflict.

Armed with old photographs Damayanti, Nirmal and others will try to recognise husbands they last saw as young men.

They are clinging to the hope that the soldiers may have given false names when captured or that they have simply forgotten their identities after years of incarceration but are still waiting for someone to find them.