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Alert cop, Nirbhaya squad reunite 11-year-old runaway boy from Gujarat with family
A police officer in Mumbai helped reunite a Gujarat family with their runaway 11-year-old son. The officer raised funds for the parents to travel to Mumbai to bring the boy back home. The boy had run away from home because he wanted to drop out of school, but his parents were against it. The police contacted local NGOs to raise funds for the family. The boy was found by the police officer at a railway station and was taken to the police station for his safety. The family was located and the boy was safely returned home.
MUMBAI: An alert policeman and women officers of Nirbhaya squad from the DN Nagar police station in Andheri helped a Gujarat family reunite with their 11-year-old son who had runway from home.
The police personnel not only located the family but also raised funds for the parents to arrive in the city by train and take the boy back home in Mundra, Gujarat.
The boy had run away from his house as he wanted to drop out of school, but his parents were against it. The parents told the police that they could not afford to travel to Mumbai and that’s when the police approached local NGOs and managed to raise funds for the family.
Around 2 am on July 25, police inspector Wahid Pathan was on patrolling duty at Andheri railway station when he saw a frail boy seemingly rummaging for food. On enquiry, the boy said he did not have a family and lived on the streets.
However, from his dialect Pathan realised that the boy was not from Maharashtra and decided to take him to the police station.
“We needed to rule out the possibility of any untoward incident with the boy. At the station, he was first fed, and the women officers started talking to him. Though he confessed to having run away from home on July 21, he couldn’t recall his address,” said Shashikant Mane assistant commissioner of police for DN Nagar division. He said that later the child remembered the locality of his aunt — father’s sister — who lives in Vadodara.
“The boy’s relatives told us they didn’t have any contact information of the boy’s parents. They did tell us that they lived in Gandhidham,” said an official from DN Nagar police station.
The police then contacted Mundra police station. “We learnt that the family was looking for the boy but had not approached the local police to report him missing. We made a video call to assure them that the child was safe with us,” said a police officer.
The parents also told the police that this was not the boy’s first attempt at running away from home. “He doesn’t like studying. He has said several times that he wants to drop out of school even though the family insists on him attending school,” informed the officer.
The parents were then told to come and pick the child up from DN Nagar police station. However, they expressed their inability to do so due to lack of funds.
“As we have been instructed by our seniors to handle cases related to women, children and senior citizens with extra sensitivity, we told them we will help them with the finance,” said the officer. The police then started asking the local NGOs for help on this front and within hours raised sufficient funds for the journey.
Meanwhile, the child was scared that the police would put him in jail or send him to a boarding school. The women officers helped in settling his fears and also, he was counselled by the child welfare committee.
PI Pathan said he is happy to have kept his promise with the little man that he would soon be able to go home with his parents.
The boy left for home on Thursday evening.
