CHINESE soldier Wang Qi is finally home after becoming trapped in India for more than 50 years.

    Wang, a Chinese army surveyor, said he had accidentally crossed over the border in India in 1963 and was unable to leave because he had not been given the correct exit visa.

    Born to a farmer family in Shaanxi with four brothers and two sisters, Wang, who is now in his 70s, had joined the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in 1960 and was tasked with building roads for the army when he was captured after “straying erroneously” over the border in January 1963.

    The incursion came just weeks after the end of the 1962 war — a monthlong conflict over the disputed border between China and India.

    Wang told the BBC: “I had gone out of my camp for a stroll but lost my way. I was tired and hungry. I saw a Red Cross vehicle and asked them to help me. They handed me over to the Indian army.”

    But Indian officials said he had “intruded into India” and given “false background and the circumstances” about his whereabouts to authorities.

    He spent the next seven years in prison before a court ordered his release in 1969 and took him to Tirodi in the central state of Madhya Pradesh but did not allow him to leave the country.

    In 1975 Wang, who also goes by his Hindi name of Raj Bahadur, “under pressure from friends,” married a local girl named Sushila and went on to have two children but always wanted to go home to see the family he left behind.

    Due to uncertainty about his legal status, it is unclear whether he is a prisoner of war. He has never been given Indian citizenship, the family often lived in poverty and his attempts to start a business were unsuccessful as he claimed he would be beaten for not giving bribes to police to stay quiet about his lack of rights.

    He began to write letters home to his family but only received a reply in the 1980s. He managed to speak to his mother for the first time in 2002 by phone after nearly 40 years. She died in 2006.

    The Chinese Embassy was able to secure a passport for him in 2013 but his family said he was still unable to leave the country without an Indian exit visa.

    A senior local official Bharat Yadav said there had been “deficiencies” and a “lack of interest” in the case.

    But the wait is finally over. Following the publicity surrounding his case generated by the BBC article the Indian Foreign Ministry has given Wang a document allowing him to leave.

    His family was also given passports allowing them to accompany him if they wished.

    He flew from Delhi to Beijing on Friday evening with his children — his wife was too ill to join him — where his elder brother Wang Zhiyuan greeted him for the first time in 50 years.

    When Wang made the journey to his hometown of Xianyang, 3,000 kilometers from Tirodi, he was greeted like a hero by crowds with banners saying “Welcome home, soldier, it’s been a rough journey.” (SD-Agencies)