It has been 10 months and Neeta Baldha still wonders whether her son Manas is homeless on the streets somewhere.
On March 17, 2018, she had fallen asleep when he left their Borivali house with Rs 600 and his Aadhaar card. He did not even take his cellphone. Then 22, Manas was suffering from clinical depression and undergoing treatment. The fourth-year medical student at Kashibai Navale Medical College, Pune, had failed his final exams in 2017. He had then written a note and left his Pune hostel room. But that bid to run away was foiled when his family rushed to Pune sensing something was amiss.
Back in Mumbai, he began to see a counsellor who diagnosed that he had suicidal tendencies and put him on anti-depressants. CCTV footage showed Manas running towards the road shortly after 3 pm on March 17, 2018, in a black T-shirt, shorts and spectacles.
A case was registered with Borivali Police. A team went to Pune on March 20, but none of his friends or teachers had any clue. Police said he might have struggled with substance abuse and also checked with a girl he had been close to. But she was not in touch with him either.
“He was a good student. He did well in the first two years. It was in the third year that he became anxious and could not study. I told him to leave his studies. Nothing was more important to us than him,” says father Ghanshyam Baldha, who works with a jewellery company.
On March 16 last year, there were some indications that his parents failed to see. “He told me he wants to meet his grandmother. We went to her house. He ate pani puri. Some elders in the building asked whether he had become a doctor and that sparked something inside him,” Neeta says.
Having been around his dad until midnight, he then started texting his Pune roommate about his furniture left behind in the hostel room. He also asked for tips to study. His batchmates had completed their MBBS.
In the morning of March 17, he visited a dermatologist to treat a skin rash. “Then we went to eat dosa and he suddenly started crying,” remembers Neeta. At lunchtime, Neeta saw him weeping again. At 3 pm, he told her to get some rest and in the next 15 minutes he was gone. Police naik Rajesh Pandey said, “We believe that he changed his identity.” A 2017 World Health Organisation report showed that globally 4.4 per cent population is estimated to be depressed. In India, the National Mental Health Survey (2015-16) found that one in 20 persons aged above 18 suffers from depression, meaning 45 million people were suffering from depression in 2015 in India.
