Nine-year-old Amit Shukla fled his home in Naranpura, Ahmedabad for the third time on Friday but was later traced to Rajkot. This is the third time he has run away from his home, reports Ahmedabad Mirror.
Amit has been telling lies about why he runs away from home. This time he claimed that his father left him with a stranger in a train to Rajkot.
Amit told Manhar Gadhavi, the Railway police sub-inspector, who spotted him at the railway station, that his father Pankaj Shukla made him sit in Bhopal Express and told a co-passenger named Jitendra to drop him at Rajkot railway station where his mother Gudiaben would collect him.
The policeman waited for his mother but nobody turned up. Amit told the policeman that his mother lived in Rajkot and father in Ahmedabad. But the fact was that both his parents were in Ahmedabad on Sunday.
In August this year too, the newspaper's team of reporters had also interacted with his parents when Amit had run away from home for the second time.
On Sunday when the newspaper team visited Amit's house in Naranpura, neighbours said the boy had been found in Rajkot.
The newspaper had received a call from Amit's neighbour, Chakuben Patel, on Saturday night saying that Amit had once again run away from his home.
This came as a surprise, as according to the neighbours, the family had starting treating the boy with a lot of care.
Chaku Patel, Shukla's neighbour said, “After the earlier two incidents, things were really improving. I used to often ask him if things were fine now and he would always reply in positive.”
She added, “This time, nobody knew that he fled as his parents kept mum. I came to know of it only late on Saturday when I saw their relatives crowding near their house.”
When the newspaper team could not find Amit's parents at their house in Naranpura, it went to their relative's place in Parasnagar where his mother was present.
The family had no clue that the boy had been found in Rajkot. Gudiaben, Amit's mother, appeared almost normal and said, “Really? Has he been found! Yeh dekho (look at this).”
She then told the newspaper team that on Friday morning at around 8.30, he left from home saying that he was going to the Radhakrishna temple to offer prayers. “This is his routine. That was it. He did not return from there.”
Asked why the family did not report the matter to the police, she said, “We are tired of answering people of why our son runs away from home. What will they think of us? Everybody feels that we (she and her husband) are at fault.”
Gudiaben added that after the last incident of his running away they the family even changed his school from Mirambika to Jyoti Hindi School so that he feels less burdened.
She added, “We even bought a television so that he can feel good at home.” Angry with her child for running away for the third time, she said, “We will now send him away to a boarding school or back to our village.”
According to Amit, who was found on Friday afternoon by RPF sub-inspector Manhar Gadhavi, his father Pankaj Shukla made him sit in Bhopal Express. He told Jitendra, a passenger to drop Amit at the Rajkot railway station where his mother would pick him up. Jitendra, Amit said, left him with Gadhavi, saying that the connecting train he had to catch had arrived.
Gadhavi kept waiting for Amit's mother but she did not turn up. When taken to the railway police station, Amit told the cops that he lives in Vijay Apartment in Vijaynagar and he studies in Kasturba School.
When the cops tried to find out his residence, they learnt there the boy was lying to them. Whatever information the boy gave to the cops turned to be fake.
When the newspaper team spoke to Amit on telephone and gave some of his friends name, he pleaded ignorance saying that the boys named Raja, Love, Prinje, Vastal and Dhruv were not his friends and he had never played with them. However, the residents of the society where Amit lives with his parents, said that Amit used to play with these boys every day.
Meanwhile, the policeman Gadhavi is taking care of Amit as his guardian. The cop takes him to his house and feeds him. Amit plays with Gadhavi's son, too.
