It was an emotional moment at a wedding earlier this year that gave Afsar with the first clue about his son, Shahd, who was kidnapped in 2007.
Having never given up hope, Afsar always carried his son’s photograph with him.
A conversation at the wedding in Old Seelampur drifted towards his kidnapped son. “I broke down and told the guest that I still had my son’s photograph in my pocket. I took it out and showed it to her,” Afsar said.
The guest cast a casual glance at the photo before taking observing it closely. “That person lived in the same colony where the boy had lived for six months. Since the boy’s physical growth was slow, there were striking similarities between him and the photograph captured 10 days before he was kidnapped,” said Rishi Pal, DCP (East).
“I never gave up hope. I would regularly visit the hospital from where he was kidnapped in the hope that his kidnappers would drop him back,” said Shahd’s mother, Fareeda.
Fareeda does recall a woman playing with her son who had dozed off on a hospital bench while she waited to see a doctor. “I thought she was showing affection to my son. I did not know she would kidnap him,” she said.
While Fareeda and Afsar are overjoyed, they have a struggle at hand. Shahd is reportedly distressed at being separated from his foster parents. “He continues to call the kidnappers his parents,” said the DCP.
The two sets of ‘parents’ were brought face-to-face in the boy’s presence at a court on Wednesday, but not a word was exchanged. The boy has been silent and appears fearful ever since he learnt the truth about his parentage. Police said he will be counselled to help him adjust. His parents, meanwhile, have decided to call him ‘Shahd’, and not ‘Sameer’ — the name given by his new parents and to which he responds.
