NEW DELHI, Nov 27: Kidnapped when he was only seven, Raju has managed to find his family in Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh bordering with Delhi after gruelling 30 years when he was held captive reportedly in a house in Rajasthan.
As per the police diary, Raju then 7 years old and lived in Sahibabad locality in Ghaziabad, and his sister were kidnapped when they were returning from school on 8 September 1993. A police complaint was filed but the boy could not be located and the case till date remained unsolved.
Raju told police that his kidnappers had sent him off to Rajasthan, where he had been living all these years. After he reached Rajasthan, he was beaten up regularly and made to work. All he received in return was just one roti in the evening. At night, he was tied up so he could not escape.
But he finally managed to give his captors the slip and boarded a truck for Delhi. He remembered the city, though he had forgotten in which area he lived and the name of his parents. Once he reached the capital, he made the rounds of many police stations, but received no help.
Five days ago, he reached the Khoda police station in Ghaziabad. The police here, he said, took care of him. They gave him shoes, arranged for food and water and also published information about him in the media and social media. Soon after, Raju’s uncle contacted the police and his family came to receive him. The matter is being investigated, said senior police officer Rajnish Upadhyay, confirming the man’s account of his coming to the police station.
“I am feeling so good now,” Raju told reporters, sitting at a Hanuman temple near the police station. “I thank Lord Hanuman. For days I have prayed that he reunite me with my family.” The 37-year-old said the younger daughter of the person at whose house he was held captive, had asked him to worship Lord Hanuman and encouraged him to escape and find his family.
(Manas Dasgupta)
