A son who had gone missing reached home safely on Sunday, making it the best Mother's Day gift for his mother.

Kamlesh Kumar (14), a Class VIII student and resident of Chhota Bariyarpur locality under ward number 38 of Motihari, went missing on Friday morning from the Gandhi Maidan area. His father, Kishori Baitha, a resident of Nandiram Chhapra village under Madhuban block of the district, had lodged an FIR with Chhatauni police station, alleging kidnap, on Saturday evening. The boy came back home on Sunday and it seems like he had gone away on his own accord.

"I had fallen into the habit of betting on the IPL games and had already lost Rs 50,000," Kamlesh told the police on Sunday "I lost another Rs 54,000 that I had borrowed from friends to make up for the lost money. I resolved to earn the lost money back and left the house on Friday morning, but a day later, I started missing my parents and called my mother up this morning."

"Police reached Sutapatti area in Muzaffarpur and recovered Kamlesh from the shop of a cloth merchant, where he had been working for the past two days," said Chhatauni station house officer Vijay Kumar Yadav.

Kamlesh's mother Sheila Devi is the mukhiya of Rupni panchayat of Madhuban block. The couple lives with their three children in a rented house in Chhota Bariyarpur.

Kamlesh has a brother and a sister and live in Chhota Bariyarpur because of their education. According to neighbours, Krishna Kumar, Kamlesh's older brother, had run away from the house a couple of years back but came back later.

Police had already lodged a case of kidnapping on Saturday.

When contacted, DAV principal Anant Sahay expressed his inability to divulge more about the boy's general conduct. This is the second untoward incident with a DAV student in the past eight months.

Earlier, Aashish Kumar, a Class IX student of the school, had been kidnapped and killed by three of his classmates. Three of his kidnappers were arrested later.