London, Apr 11: Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who has been convicted of imprisoning his daughter for 24 years in a windowless cellar and fathering her seven children, is begging his family through phone calls to visit him in jail, it has emerged.

The calls, however, usually end with kids hanging up on him, prison officials said.

The 74-year-old has not been able to contact his daughter Elisabeth, 42, or the six children he fathered with her during her ordeal, reports The Sun.

But he knows where she resides, and has even requested to be shifted to a prison nearer to her in the hope that she or the children might want to see him.

Austrian justice ministry officials have confirmed the phone call onslaught, after Fritzl started a life sentence for rape and the murder of one of his cellar children. (ANI)