Lost 9 years ago, Chennai boy, 15, reunites with family

CHENNAI: He may be something of a typical high school jock, with the gregariousness that comes to children with confidence, but 15-year-old Vinod was speechless on Thursday night.

Overcome by emotions when his father Raju, a construction worker, opened his arms to hug him, the Class IX student simply held on tightly to the older man. Nine years after he wandered away from his family in

Royapettah

— where his parents worked at the time — Vinod had finally reunited with his family.

He learned from his father that his family, from

Madalangi

in Andhra Pradesh, had grown a little larger since he’d last met them. In addition to his little sister, who survived when their mother died during childbirth, Vinod now also had two little stepsisters and a stepmother.

Police had found Vinod near Chennai Central a short while after he went missing. Unable to trace his parents, they put him in a home in the city. He later joined

St Joseph’s High School

, Erukkancheri, as a boarder and excelled in sports, becoming a middle-distance runner and winning events in

state-level athletic meets

.

On Thursday, Vinod’s uncle, Srinivasan, and aunt Bhavani, had also come to the city with Raju to meet their long-lost nephew, a meeting that

Don Bosco Anbu Illam

’s Father Joseph Leo and J Reagan, a volunteer with the organisation, made possible by tracking down the boy’s family through social media websites.

It didn’t matter to Raju that Vinod had forgotten Telugu.

“I was excited to speak to my son after nine years... I thought I’d lost him for good,” Raju said.