Lost Boy Finds Family After 8 Years in Himachal Hills

When 19-year-old Jayesh Bodade walked into a gaushala (cow shelter) in Rampur, Himachal Pradesh three months ago, he was searching for work and a place to sleep. He found both, plus something he didn't expect: a path back to the family he left behind eight years earlier.

Jayesh was just 12 when his mother took him and his older brother away from their home in Akola district, Maharashtra in 2018. After a quarrel with his mother in the town of Shegaon, young Jayesh left on his own.

For the next eight years, he survived by working odd jobs across five Indian states. He moved through Madhya Pradesh, Goa, New Delhi, Chandigarh, Jammu and Kashmir, and finally settled in Himachal Pradesh for the past five years.

Back home, his father Sudhakar Bodade, a daily wage laborer, filed a missing person complaint at Khadan police station. Years passed with no leads, and Sudhakar eventually focused on raising Jayesh's older brother Yogesh, who had returned home early on.

The breakthrough came during a routine December police verification at the gaushala. When officers asked workers for identity documents following reports of smuggling in the area, Jayesh had nothing to show. He was taken to the local police outpost for questioning.

That's when he finally told them where he came from. "He told them he was from Akot in Maharashtra," says gaushala chief Puranchand Sharma, who had hired Jayesh three months earlier.

Local Shimla police contacted their counterparts in Akola, where authorities were already revisiting old missing cases under Operation Muskaan, a program aimed at tracing missing children. The pieces quickly fell into place.

Sunny's Take

Police Inspector Manoj Kedare arranged a video call on January 10. Sudhakar immediately recognized his younger son after so many years. "After so many years, the police called me and said my son has been found in Shimla," Sudhakar recalls.

Last week, Sudhakar traveled alone to Shimla. Father and son reunited at a police station on January 14, meeting face to face for the first time in almost eight years.

Now back in Akola, Jayesh admits he already misses the mountains. "Right now, it feels good to be back, but I think I will go back again," he says. The noise and heat bother him after five years in the cool, quiet hills.

But something has changed. "When I left home as a child, I was scared," Jayesh says. "Now, I don't feel scared at all."

His father wants him to stay, but Jayesh is working to convince him that distance doesn't mean goodbye anymore. After eight years of silence, this family now knows where to find each other.