Three years after boy went missing, family finds hope in viral video

Aditya went missing in December 2015.

Thirteen-year-old Ayush Rafukiya was browsing through his father’s phone when he first came across a video on a social media platform, which showed a teenaged boy mopping a table in a tent while wiping his forehead. The boy, seen dressed in a blue t-shirt, soon leaves when someone calls for him.

The 29-second video, which had gone viral for purportedly showing the lookalike of a famous politician, has given new hope to a family that their 14-year-old eldest son Aditya is alive.

The father, Bansi Rafukiya (35), a mechanic who resides in a 100-square-feet room at a slum in Walkeshwar, said, “We have approached the police and the cyber crime cell with the video, and have spread the video on multiple chat groups. I even tried to trace the source of the video.”

The family, along with local Congress members, have also started a search for the white-bearded man seen cooking in the tent shown in the video to find a link to the boy.

“The video went viral among a group of Congress members. But no one knew who took it,” said local corporator Pramod Manjrekar, who has been aiding the Rafukiyas in finding their son.

Sanjay Nirupam, president of the Mumbai unit of Congress, said the video was suspected to be captured a year ago in Delhi. “It became viral recently,” he said, adding the source of the video could not be traced despite multiple attempts.

In December 2015, Aditya, then aged 12, was reported missing. His mother Prabha, a vegetable vendor, said he had left the house after being scolded for poor academic performance. “We last saw a CCTV footage of Mumbai Central. He was sitting on Platform 4 with his bag,” she said.

Since then, Rafukiya has made several month-long trips, with clothes and a thin mattress in his backpack, in search of his son. He claims to have taken Saurashtra Express and Golden Temple Mail — the two trains that left from Platform 4 — to stick posters of his missing son at every station.

According to the Malabar Hill police, with whom an FIR of the missing child was first registered, the video has been shared internally to look for the boy. “Teams were sent outstation to look for him at railway stations,” said Senior Inspector Vinod Kamble.

Manjrekar said the trail went dead after tracing the video through few groups. “Nobody could remember who sent the video,” he said.

Special IG of Cyber Crime Cell Brijesh Singh said, “WhatsApp has started stripping off the metadata that could help us in locating the source of such videos. Getting any indication of where the boy might be is difficult through just the video. It has become a challenge even for investigating officials whenever a WhatsApp video needs to be probed.”