E-Paper
Three years after he went missing from West Bengal, special child reunited with parents in Assam
He was soon placed by the district child welfare committee in care of Destination, a Guwahati-based NGO that works with special children
Three years after he went missing from Cooch Behar district in West Bengal, 15-year-old Mithun Debnath was reunited with his parents on Saturday in Guwahati.
A special child with mental and learning problems, Mithun was found in Assam’s Dhubri three years ago with no clue how he managed to leave his home and reach another state.
He was soon placed by the district child welfare committee in care of Destination, a Guwahati-based NGO that works with special children. Mithun kept mostly to himself and didn’t speak at all.
Also Read: Man spent 8 months in UP jail as bail order did not mention his full name
“Maybe he was unfamiliar with the language as his mother tongue is Bengali and the children in Destination spoke Assamese. After spending six months with us, he said in Bengali that he wants to go home. That’s how we guessed he could be from West Bengal,” said Chumki Bora, superintendent, Destination.
“But he was unable to give us his proper address. It took us nearly two years to from whatever little information he used to provide us. We contacted police in Siliguri in West Bengal, but didn’t get any response from them,” she added.
A breakthrough took place last month when the chairperson of Cooch Behar child welfare committee in West Bengal visited Dhubri. The issue was discussed with him and instructions issued to try and trace the address.
“The child welfare committee there managed to trace the address and locate his parents. Once they sent us documents and old photos of Mithun, we were sure about his identity. His parents reached Guwahati on Saturday and we handed him over to them,” said Bora.
The father, a vegetable vendor, said that Mithun had gone to watch a prayer meeting and went missing after that. They had lodged a police case and carried out a search in their area for many months, but failed to get any result.
“Despite our efforts not yielding any positive outcome, I was always hopeful that I will find my child one day. I am very happy that we were finally able to trace him and are now taking him back home,” Mithun’s mother Anita told journalists on Saturday.
