MUMBAI: Within two days of a teen disappearing from home here and posting an ominous down-and-out note on social media, Mumbai police’s crime branch tracked him down 60 km away and brought him back safely.
It turned out the 17-year-old had borrowed Rs 45 lakh to start a business, but the venture failed and he lost it all. As creditors started hounding him, he slipped away and was contemplating a drastic step when the cops found him.
The teen, who lives with his mother at her maternal home in Andheri (East) since his parents’ divorce, had dropped out of school. For the past year and a half, he had been trying to run a business selling Covid-related gear such as masks, sanitisers and PPE kits.
On July 5, he did not return home which got his mother and grandparents worried. They called up all his friends before approaching the Sakinaka police the next day to lodge a missing complaint. The crime branch began a parallel probe as the case involved the disappearance of a minor. Meanwhile, a note surfaced on his Instagram account where the boy wrote that “he had been scammed”. He further wrote that he had made a big mistake and that his dead body would be found soon. The note ended with an apology.
One of his friends alerted his mother about the note. The moment she told the crime branch about it, investigators gathered that the matter was serious. “The boy had switched off his phone. But he was accessing social media from someone else’s handset. He was not using this other handset to make or answer any calls, which made our job tough,” said an officer. The police roped in experts to find the location of this second phone. The handset belonged to one of his friends, who wasn’t aware the boy was using it. The location was Virar East, 60 km from the boy’s home.
On July 7, a team headed by senior inspector Mahesh Thakur and assistant inspector Dhanraj Chaudhary took a train to Virar. After hunting for some time, they found the teen outside a Ganpati temple, looking crestfallen. After assuring him that things would be okay, investigators asked why he had left home. The boy replied that he had promised to repay his creditors with interest, once he made profits in his business. But he was never able to make any profit. The teen said he had grown up without a father and had frequent arguments with his mother. He said they lived in a small house and were forced to move homes often for lack of funds. He added that his grandparents loved him dearly and he was keen to make it big for their sake, but had ended up disappointing them.
The police brought him back and counselled him before reuniting him with his mother.
Clinical psychologist Narendra Kinger said when families break up, they should seek out professional counselling. “There should be no shame in taking help from a counsellor. In fact, by speaking to counsellors, parents can know what is actually going on in the child’s mind,” he added.
