Bengaluru: Aadhaar helps officials reunite missing speech impaired boy with mom after 6 years

Bengaluru: A speech impaired boy who had gone missing six years ago from Raitha Santhe (a vegetable market) at Singanayakanalli near Yelahanka, was reunited with his mother.

In 2016 Bharat Kumar, then 10 years old, disappeared from the market while his mother Parvathamma was busy selling vegetables. She had lodged a complaint with the Yelahanka police station after waiting for two days in the hope that the boy would find his way back home. In her complaint, she expressed suspicion that her son was kidnapped.

The distraught woman visited many temples praying for safe return of her son. Parvathamma lost all hopes of seeing her son again though she had not spent a day all these years without remembering Bharat.

Bharath landed in Nagpur in Maharashtra after 10 months, from the day after he had boarded a train at the Bengaluru railway station not knowing where he was headed. The police on duty at the Nagpur railway station found him wandering frantically on the premises and inquired about him.

After confirming that the boy was alone, the officers took him to a rehabilitation centre where they tried to get him enrolled for an Aadhaar card.

The request was however rejected as there was already an existing Aadhaar card in Bengaluru in Bharath's name.

The officers then contacted a regional Aadhaar office of Mumbai and got a confirmation that Bharath's fingerprints matched with the card in Bengaluru.

The centre's officer got in contact with the Karnataka police to track the boy's mother.

After the police located Parvathamma, she was sent to Nagpur where she reunited with her son. Yelahanka police inspector K P Sathyanarayana sent his constables to Nagapura along with Parvathamma on March 7. Parvathamma's joy knew no bounds on seeing her son after six years. She hugged her son, now a 16-year-old boy, and broke down in tears. The mother and son came back to Bengaluru on Wednesday.