Bail bid helps man reunite with family 24 yrs after fleeing home

JAIPUR: Nitya Baghel didn’t inspire any of Manmohan Desai’s and Prakash Mehra’s lost-and-found dramas that had many teary-eyed in the 1970s. But the 38-year-old Rajasthan native is now at the centre of a real-life tale crying to be remade on reel.
A background check for bail papers after a recent illegal liquor-sale arrest has dramatically reunited Nitya with father Kirti Ram Baghel 24 years after he fled home in Dholpur district following a scolding from his dad for flunking a Class 8 test.
“We did everything, from approaching police to visiting temples to meeting babas (sorcerers), but Nitya could not be found. After 10 years, we gave up hope and thought he must have died,” Kirti Ram, 62, said as cops at Manpur police station in Dausa district distributed sweets after scripting the needle-in-a-haystack saga.
Nitya was around 14 when he vanished in 1998 and, in all these years, had slummed it out as a child labourer, doing odds jobs like working in tea stalls and highway dhabas.
So how was dad so sure that the detainee was his son? “He had a stitch mark on his right eye and injury marks on his left leg. I have no words to express my gratitude to the police,” said Kirti Ram.
As it turns out, the stalls and dhabas were not just the source of Nitya’s livelihood, but also his troubles. He was held on May 26 for selling liquor illegally at a dhaba along the Dausa-Agra highway.
“After we brought Nitya to the police station, he was not answering our questions properly. We wanted his ID but he did not have any. When we asked sternly, he told us he ran away from his village in Dholpur when he was 14. We sent a team and managed to find his father,” said circle inspector, Manpur.
The reunion took place on May 29. “After Nitya failed his Class 8 exam, I asked him to reappear for the test and prepare for another year. But he failed again, this time in the half-yearly exam. I scolded him and he ran away,” recalled Kirti Ram.
Inspector Saini praised Pushpendra Singh, a head constable at Manpur police station who took personal interest in the case, visited Nitya’s village and got his mother to speak to her son through a video call. Unlike many happy endings, though, this tale will not culminate with a family meal together. It will be bigger. “We will organise a feast in the village,” an elated father vowed.