Karnataka - Bangalore   

Runaway boy restored to mother

Special Correspondent

Eight-year-old Mubarak was rescued in Kolkata

Mubarak

Bangalore: Eight-year-old Mubarak may have been a bit confused about geography.

This young runaway landed in Kolkata instead of Delhi where he hoped to find his mother.

It all started a few years ago when the boy's mother Irshad went to Delhi to see her older daughter. Mubarak was left with another older sister in Bangalore.

Within a few days the boy felt homesick and could not bear to be away from his mother.

He ran away to catch a train to Delhi. At the city railway station, he made a big mistake; he boarded a train to Howrah.

There, Mubarak fell into the company of a group of beggar boys who ill-treated him.

A policeman saw the boy crying and referred him to the Don Bosco child helpline in Kolkata. The boy could not correctly tell the people there his address in Bangalore.

"Whatever information they could gather from Mubarak was passed on to us and we began to locate his family here," said P.S. George of Bosco child helpline in Bangalore which helps street children and restores runaways to their families.

"We asked the people in Kolkata to bring him to Bangalore and learning that he could identify Magadi Road, took him there and drove all along the road. He could identify Halegudathahalli where his father worked at a butcher's shop. The shop owner said he was no longer working there, and finally we traced Mubarak's uncle and found that the boy's mother was frantically searching for her lost son," says Fr. George. Mubarak was restored to his mother on Thursday.

"Mubarak's story is not an isolated one; many children end up lost in Bangalore also. It is important to restore a lost or runaway child with the family as the child can always be exploited and used for begging on the streets.

Bosco networks with organisations in other cities to help such children in distress," Fr. George said.

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