Lockdown: C'garh PWD missing from 2010 reunited with kin in MP

BARWANI (MP): The lockdown for the novel Coronavirus outbreak with its severe hardships for migrant labourers also became the scene of a speech and hearing impaired youngster from Chhattisgarh getting united with his father after a decade, thanks to the extra efforts taken by an official in Sendhwa in Madhya Pradesh's Barwani district.

When some 500 migrant labourers reached Sendhwa town after walking several hundred kilometers from Maharashtra amid the lockdown, the speech and hearing impaired man in his early twenties was unable to give any details about himself, said Inspector Vinod Kumar Yadav, in charge of the centre where these migrants were being screened.

"Since he was unable to communicate, I asked him to write his name on a piece of paper. He wrote 'urave' which I found out was the surname of some people in Shahdol in MP and neighbouring Chhattisgarh. I then contacted an income tax officer Yuvraj Thakur who circulated the youngster's image on Whatsapp groups in that state," he said on Sunday.

Yadav said he got a call from a Chhattisgarh police constable who claimed the youngster was a native of Syahimudi village in that state's Korba district and had been missing since 2010.

"Through a video call, the man's father Itwar Das identified him and told us his name was Laxmi Das. The man had walked off with a group of labourers as a child and went missing since as he was unable to communicate about his kin and native place," the official said. Yadav said Itwar Das managed to obtain permission to travel to Sendhwa amid the lockdown and was united with his son after all these years. "They have gone back to Chhattisgarh and their happiness makes me feel all the effort to find out more about the youngster was worth it."