Greater Noida: Specially abled boy who went missing in 2019 traced

NOIDA: Police this week tracked down a specially abled child, who was reported missing by his family in Greater Noida over two and a half years ago, to Bijnore - some 200km away.
The boy, now 13, was found in Najibabad on Wednesday. He was reunited with his family on Thursday.
Police said the minor has speech and hearing impairments, and suffers from a mental illness. He was reported missing on December 22, 2019.
The child, who was 11-years-old at that time, had stepped out of the house on his own but couldn't find his way back, his family had told police.
His parents had then approached the Beta 2 police station, where a case was registered against unidentified persons under IPC Section 364 (kidnapping in order to sacrifice or murder).
"Ever since the case was registered, our team had been working to find the child. We sent his pictures to various orphanages and other such institutions to get any leads. Our team had been proactively going after the leads and tried to make sure that they followed it to the end. Initially, our team tracked him down to Ghaziabad. Then we got to know that he somehow went to Hapur, then Amroha and finally landed in Bijnor. On Wednesday, we finally managed to recover him from a government-run orphanage in Najibabad," said Vishal Pandey, the additional deputy commissioner of police, Greater Noida.
Police said they had some difficulty in recognising the boy as his physical features has changed.
"We showed the minor to his mother on a video call and she immediately recognised him. Over the past two years, our team had searched several orphanages and sought help from NGOs. One such NGO told us about a WhatsApp group where such cases from across UP are discussed. The child's picture was put on that group and somebody recognised him," said Anil Kumar, SHO, Beta 2 station.