ALMOST 17 years ago, a Blackburn family received devastating news.

Student Paul Wells, from Feniscowles, had been snatched with three other tourists on a trekking trip in trouble-torn Kashmir – the province divided between India and Pakistan.

For two years his parents lived a daily agony, believing he might be still alive.

Prime Minister John Major raised their plight with government leaders in India and Pakistan in a desperate effort to free him.

After believing he had been in captivity for 600 days, parents Bob and Dianne were told a body had been found but then that it was not their son after all.

Three years later, the Indian Government claimed that the body might indeed be Paul and in 2002, seven years after his kidnap, the couple admitted they might never discover his fate.

Now a book suggests Paul was really killed less than six months after his capture by Indian-backed militants who had ‘bought’ him from pro-Pakistan guerrillas and that their deaths were hushed up because it suited politicians to keep the drama going.

It is outrageous that even today the Wells family are denied the closure they deserve following the terrible ordeal they and their innocent son have had to suffer.