Ganesh Shaw with his mother on Saturday. Telegraph picture

Krishnagar, July 12: A seven-year-old boy who had been kidnapped from Calcutta three years ago and told that his mother had died was found begging at a village close to the Bangladesh border in Nadia.

Police took him to mother Manju, 35, last night.

The boy’s grandmother opened the door to a group of plainclothes policemen.

Manju Shaw, busy with chores, looked around and a frail voice cried out “my ma”.

The women hugged the boy and all three sobbed for minutes without uttering a word.

Then Manju collected herself. “My husband had accused me of selling Ganesh for money. Then he threw me out of his house.… He’d know the truth now.”

Ganesh Shaw had been seeking alms in Chapra, 140km from his Kalighat home, for three years.

He had told some local residents he was from Calcutta and they tipped off the police, who rescued him on Thursday.

At the police station, Ganesh said his mother, who sold sweets on the pavement near the Kali temple in Kalighat, had died. “He had been taught to say that,” said Suman Chatterjee, the officer in charge of Chapra.

The mother and son were formally reunited at the Krishnagar chief judicial magistrate’s court this morning.

“For three years I had been moving from pillar to post for my son. But neither Tollygunge police station nor the missing persons squad in Lalbazar did anything,” complained Manju.

The police said one Piar Mondal, 25, and his mother Tuni, 54, had kidnapped Ganesh on June 5, 2005. They have been arrested.

“Tuni and his widowed mother had kept Ganesh confined at their home for a few days to train him to beg. Rechristened Subho, Ganesh used to walk about 5km in a day and earn between Rs 25 and 50,” said Chatterjee, the Chapra officer-in-charge.

Ganesh was rescued from the Chapra bazaar, around 5km from Ranabandh, where the Mondals lived.

Every day, he would leave the Mondals’ home walking in the morning and return home in a bus at the end of the day.

“We are trying to find out if Piar and his mother had kidnapped others, too,” Chatterjee added.

With her two other children — Khushi, 10, and Kartick, 5 — Manju has been staying with her mother in Kalighat since being thrown out of home by her plumber husband Raju.

Ganesh had disappeared when his mother was busy selling sweets outside the Kali temple. “He was playing with the other boys. When I finished selling sweets around 7pm, I could not find him. I looked for him everywhere but in vain,” Manju said.

The next morning, Manju and Raju had lodged a missing diary. But Raju later accused his wife of selling the boy.