Jagatsinghpur: Child protection personnel and rights activists successfully essayed the role of Bajrangi Bhaijaan in real life to unite a missing 16-year-old Nepali boy Salman Ansari with his family.
The sequence of events that culminated in the reunion looked like a mirror image of Salman Khan's Bollywood blockbuster Bajrangi Bhaijaan, said child protection unit personnel Biplab Mallick, who took the boy to Nepal.
The real life 'lost and found' script was a perfect match for the reel life screenplay. Like the outpouring of emotion in Bajrangi Bhaijaan when the missing Pakistani baby reunites with her family, officials of the Odisha child protection cell were given a tearful farewell by the boy's parents and villagers on the Indo-Nepal border, said Mallick.
Not able to withstand the pressure of her parents to be serious in studies, Salman had left his Nepal home at the age of 11.
"We have successfully repatriated Salman Ansari. We are happy that the boy has been reunited with his family after five long years. It was a quite a task in tracing his nativity root and his family," said Banishree Patnaik, district child protection officer of Khurda. "We strictly adhered to legal formalities under the provisions of Juvenile Justice Act in repatriating the child to his home in Rupaydiha, a village on the Uttar Pradesh-Nepal border. The Child Welfare Committee (CWC), a quasi-judicial body, monitored the whole process of repatriation. We obtained relevant documents from the boy's parents and local Nepali authorities and furnished it before the CWC. The boy was repatriated last week."
After fleeing from home in Nepal, Salman had landed in Bhubaneswar. He had been rescued from an automobile garage in the city on August 5, 2016. He was later rehabilitated in a short stay home for children following CWC direction. As the child yearned for reunion with his family, the counsellors at the short stay home had to get his address. But he could not recollect his address and this became a stumbling block in repatriating him. All he managed to tell the home officials was that he lived in a hilly region. After much effort, he could recollect that Rupaydiha was the name of his village, she said.
"We used Google to locate the village, but failed to get any clue. When we learnt that there was a village named Rupaydiha in Uttar Pradesh, we took Salman there. But the effort proved futile. However, UP police hinted that the name of the village sounded of Nepali origin. Then we sought the help of the embassy of Nepal in New Delhi. But the embassy did not respond with necessary seriousness. As a last effort, we went to the Indo-Nepal border on April 6. Our perseverance finally paid dividends. On the Indo-Nepal border, Salman asked the security personnel about Rupaydiha. As luck would have it, Salman spotted one of his childhood friends at the border. They recognised each other and our mission paid off," she said.
"When we approached Salman's family with the help of his friend, the joy of his family members knew no bounds. They were speechless. They were in tears and emotions ran high in the sleepy village," said Mallick.
After his son went missing, Salman's father made huge efforts to trace his son. The poor father had even lodged a missing report in Punjab and searched for Salman in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Nepal. After the sweet reunion, Salman's grateful father and several other villagers travelled to India-Nepal border to see off the two activists who had gone to Nepal to repatriate the missing teenager.
