Gujarat: Mumbai teen’s tweet brings home stranded mother after 50 days

VADODARA: What was shaping up as mission impossible for 50 days for the 19-year-old student in Thane, it was his dogged determination and a tweet that finally brought him success.
Hrithik was on his mission to bring home his stranded mother, Kshama Gujarathi, from Pedhmala village in Sabarkantha district where she, along with her friend, Deepa Panchal, had gone to offer prayers to Goddess Amba before Chaitri Navratri in the hamlet located 20kms off Himmatnagar.
However, no sooner had they reached their destination, the country first went into janta curfew and thereafter it came to a grinding halt under lockdown.
Son of a FMCG salesperson and a homemaker mother, Hrithik was crestfallen. He tried all possible equations to juggle his mom home, but all his efforts met a dead end. It being a matter of two states only compounded his miseries.
“I contacted officials of Maharashtra government requesting help, but they said that they cannot do anything and that I should contact the Gujarat government,” said the second-year BCom student.
Unaware of any helplines of the Gujarat government, Hrithik then took to his dormant Twitter account to contact Gujarat officials. He knocked on several windows till he found the right handle.
“I came across the Twitter account of Sabarkantha police and saw how they have been helping people,” said Hrithik, who was utterly surprised at the prompt response he recieved. He wrote to the Sabarkantha police on May 8 and within two hours he got a response asking him to contact on the control room number and also share his mobile phone number.
After taking details of his mother’s location, a team of Sabarkantha police reached out to Gujarathi and Panchal and took them to district collectorate to arrange for passes so that they can travel back.
“We have a sub-inspector handling our social media and once the officer received details, the women were helped in getting passes,” said Chaitanya Mandlik, superintendent of police, Sabarkantha. Not only that cops also helped the two women find a taxi to ferry them back to Mumbai, safe and sound.
“Our traffic sub-inspector had to intervene and convinced a travel company’s driver to drop the two women,” Mandlik said, adding that on May 12 afternoon, Gujarathi and Panchal were reunited with their families.
“We wanted to offer prayers but due to lockdown we had to stay back at our family priest, Babulal Joshi’s house only,” said Gujarathi.