In an operation that spanned six months, the police in Maharashtra and Kerala have helped an orphaned 14-year-old speech and hearing impaired boy reunite with his elder brother and adoptive parents. The boy had gone missing from CST in April.
While the police failed to comprehend Sunil’s (name changed) sign language, they did not lose hope and persisted with trial-and-error methods before succeeding in reuniting him with his 16-year-old brother, who works as a salesman in one of the stores lining the CST subway.
According to the police, Sunil and his brother Anil (name changed) were living in dire poverty in Bihar, where a couple had adopted them after their parents died when they were young. However, severe poverty forced Anil to move to Mumbai early in April this year, and he decided to bring Sunil along. The brothers lived on pavements near CST, where Anil took up employment with a chai shop.
A few days later, he got a job as a salesman at a shop in the CST subway. Idle the whole day, Sunil would roam around, watch basketball games and other sports at the Mumbai School Sports Association opposite St Xavier’s College, while his brother worked.
On April 21, Sunil suddenly went missing from CST. Anil lodged a missing person complaint with the police and searched for him wherever he could, but to no avail. The CST police checked CCTV footage at the station to ascertain if Sunil had boarded a train, but could not find any trace of him.
However, Sunil had apparently boarded a long-distance train and landed up in Kerala, where he was picked up by the Government Railway Police (GRP). When the police tried to find out his residential address and other information using sign language, the boy would gesture the action of a ball being flicked into a basket.
Unable to get any information, the police tried to show him photographs of India’s landmarks like Gateway of India, and he recognised a photograph of CST. Meanwhile, a local NGO was roped in to take care of the boy. In June, he was sent to Mumbai and stayed at the Dongri remand home for minors. However, there was no trace of his family.
In June last week, he was handed over to the Juvenile Aid Protection Unit (JAPU), a specialised unit with the social service branch of the Mumbai police. The JAPU officers took the boy and made rounds of all sports facilities where basket ball is played to see if his family could be traced. When he was brought to CST, he pointed towards the subway, and officers began enquiring if any of the hawkers knew him. Sensing that he might have been living in and around CST, they began walking towards Metro Cinema, asking shopkeepers, hawkers if they recognised the boy.
When they came to a sports facility opposite St. Xaviers College, the boy recognised the place. A sugarcane vendor also recognised the boy, and directed the police towards the CST shops. The police took him there, and began enquiring with each shop, where Anil spotted his brother.
“It was difficult to understand the boy, but my team did not lose hope and remained persistent. Finally, we managed to reunite him with his family," Pravin Patil, DCP (Social Service Branch), said. On Wednesday, their adoptive parents took both boys home to Bihar.
The writer is a freelance journalist
