15-year-old reunited with family after 5 years

HYDERABAD: A scene straight out of Bollywood flick 'Bajrangi Bhaijaan' played out last weekend in Vijayawada. A superintendent of Children Home for Boys helped a 15-year-old person with learning difficulties, Mohammed Basha, who went missing five years ago, reunite with his family in Vijayawada.
The boy went missing on June 12, 2018 during Ramzan month while playing with his friends. Incidentally, he was reunited with his family again in the holy month.
"The boy might have boarded a train in Vijayawada and landed in Warangal. He was rescued by police and Childline and shifted to a government home in Warangal. Upon assessment by the staff there, they detected that he has about 40-50% intellectual disability and began therapy, but all he said about his past life was three words - Bibi, Basha and Chennai," superintendent, children's home, Nageshwar Rao told TOI.
In December 2020, he was shifted to Hyderabad's children home under the juvenile welfare wing and put under the care of Nageshwar Rao, who made it his mission to find the child's family.
"It was very difficult to get any details from him. So, we checked Darpan face recognition app for missing child requests, checked with police officials, but to no avail. Finally, we approached the Moosarambagh Aadhaar centre for leads," Nageshwar Rao said.
It was here that with child's iris scans, they traced his address to Indra Nagar in Vijayawada. However, the lead failed as local authorities confirmed all old door numbers were changed as village was merged into the municipality.
On April 7, Rao landed in Indra Nagar and took up a door-to-door search. Word spread that such a search was happening, and a snack vendor finally recognised the child.
What followed was happy tears. "The family was in utter disbelief. It was 'iftar' time. They wept, thanked me and shared their food with me. I took all their documents and verified. Turns out, they even had missing posters made and had tried to lodge a complaint, but could not," said Rao.On April 10, boy was reunited with his family.