A childhood lost in darkness and silence. That became the story of a boy who was kidnapped by a truck driver in Ahmedabad and taken hundreds of kilometers away to Haryana.
He was only a seven-year-old then and stepped out to play before the truck driver took him captive.
There, the boy worked as a bonded labour er on an animal farm, according to a report by a national daily. He lived among goats, sheep and filth. For 30 years, he lost contact with home and the outside world.
This month, he returned to Ahmedabad. He had become a skinny 35-year-old man. Near a railway station, he found a police post.
His memories were a blur. All he had now was hazy recollections of his father who commuted on a bicycle. He had five sisters, he recalled. They lived in a three-room house.
The man introduced himself as ‘Raju,’ the name tattooed on his hand, his only identity through all these years. Kalupur police inspector HR Vaghela said Raju described his saga in Hindi in just a few minutes, detailing how he was kidnapped, confined, and tortured in an animal pen.
According to one police official involved in the case, Raju believes he was taken around the 50th Independence year of India.
When resistance became futile, he was forced to obey his captor’s orders.
Vaghela reflected on the grim reality, noting that the boy was fed only twice a day and had to care for his captor’s animals, a situation that left little room for hope or escape.
For years, Raju begged various people to help him flee. Eventually, last year, a truck driver agreed to take him to Jaipur but only followed through recently. From Jaipur, he boarded a train to Ahmedabad, bringing his story to light.
Raju himself is uncertain whether ‘Raju’ is his real name, as it is taken from the tattoo on his hand. Vaghela explained that Raju was never sent to school and may have attended briefly in Ahmedabad before being forced into being a bonded worker in Haryana.
A senior police officer described to the daily the extent of his lost years, stating that Raju’s childhood, adolescence, and youth had essentially been erased across multiple farms in Haryana. The officer also acknowledged the challenge ahead, saying that Raju has no knowledge of the places where he was taken, making it difficult to trace his family or even identify the area where he grew up.
Still, authorities are working to reunite Raju with his family. Vaghela said they have shared information, including Raju’s photo and the details he remembers about his father, siblings, and home. They are also searching for any missing person reports filed at the time, though the exact year of his abduction remains unclear.
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