Family document
Bipin Joshi (far right) with his sister Puspa, father Mahananda and mother Padma
In a remote village in western Nepal, thousands of miles from Israel, Mahananda Joshi sat at home Thursday, agitated, his phone in his hand.
The phone is no longer far from his hand. And never in silent mode. He is waiting for news of his son, Bipin Joshi, a 23-year-old Nepalese agriculture student, kidnapped by Hamas and taken to Gaza.
Every time the phone rings, Mahananda, a local teacher, thinks it might bring him news of Bipin, or even – his greatest hope – his son’s voice on the line.
“Unfortunately, it’s always someone else,” Mahananda said.
Bipin was among dozens of foreign workers kidnapped alongside Israelis during the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023.
Twenty-four people were later released – 23 from Thailand and one from the Philippines – but Bipin and nine others remained.
We never clearly understood why.
The last time Bipin’s mother, Padma, spoke to him was October 6, she said, the day before he was kidnapped.
He assured her that he was eating well and showed her the clothes he was wearing.
The next time the family saw him was on video footage taken at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, shown to them by Israeli officials, who asked them to identify him.
This was confirmation that he had been taken alive.
The BBC now understands that Bipin may still be alive, but Nepal’s ambassador to Israel, Dhan Prasad Pandit, said he still had “no concrete information” on Bipin’s condition or whereabouts. is located.
Family document
Bipin Joshi, 23, studied agriculture in Israel
Mahananda, Bipin’s mother Padma, and his sister Puspa, 18, live in a small, one-story white house in the village of Bispuri Mahendranagar, near the border with India.
As of Thursday, they had heard nothing from officials, they said, only headlines announcing a ceasefire deal.
The news gave them all hope.
“I feel like he will message me today or tomorrow to say mom, I’m free now and I’ll go home immediately,” Padma said.
But relief for the Joshi family, if it comes, will not come so quickly.
“Everything could collapse”
Like the nine other foreign workers held hostage, Bipin is not expected to be released during the first phase of the ceasefire, which will prioritize the release of elderly men, women and children.
The fear for the family is that while they wait, everything could change.
“Everything could fall apart,” Padma said with tears in her eyes.
The family’s ordeal began the day of the attack.
Bipin was one of several Nepali students present that day on the kibbutzim in southern Israel, and Mahananda, a teacher at a local school, received a call from one of them to tell him that Bipin had been kidnapped.
At that time, Mahananda knew nothing about the Hamas attack or the situation unfolding in Israel, and he struggled to make sense of what he was hearing.
He later learned that ten Nepalese students were killed in the attack and that one of them, his son, appeared to have been taken hostage.
This feeling of disconnection has persisted for 15 agonizing months, Mahananda and Padma said Thursday.
The pain of each hostage family has been great, but for some of those far from Israel, there has been an additional feeling of isolation.
Bipin’s family says they have not been contacted since ceasefire agreement was announced
“It’s been a very lonely experience,” Mahananda said.
Mr Pandit, Nepal’s ambassador to Israel, told the BBC he had been in regular contact with the family and visited the village.
Mahananda painted a slightly different picture, saying that early in the war the family received many visits from officials, but as the war dragged on they were increasingly left alone.
“Since the new ceasefire agreement, no one has come to see us or communicated with us,” he said.
“Everything we know comes from the news.”
A spokesman for the Israeli president’s office, Isaac Herzog, who has worked with hostage families over the past 15 months, said he treated all hostages the same, whether Israeli or foreign. , and that he worked diligently to free them all. .
For some families, the news of the ceasefire gives hope that their 15-month ordeal is coming to an end and that they will see their loved ones again in a few weeks.
For others, like the Joshis, any hope must be tempered.
The longer they have to wait, the more likely the ceasefire agreement will collapse.
At her home in Bispuri Mahendranagar on Thursday, Bipin’s sister Puspa held a photo of her brother as she spoke.
Tears filled her eyes as she talked about coming home. She was convinced he would.
“And when I see him again, I’m going to hug him,” she said. “And cry.”
