Over 36 hours of intense agony for a city family ended at about 6.30 am on Monday, when their 13-year-old son, who had gone missing on Sunday evening, called them and said he was coming home. He had gone to Tirumala to offer prayers.
His family had gone to the temple 18 times in the past. Early on Monday, he called his mother from a bystander’s phone in Tirumala. Immediately afterwards, his mother informed, who informed the Tirupati police and the teen was traced.
Recounting the sequence of events, police said he had left home on Sunday to go to tuition classes and did not return. Based on the family’s complaint, police tracked to the Malakpet railway station, from where he took a train to Tirupati. He reached Tirupati between 6 am and 6.
30 am on Monday, and went to Tirumala along with other co-passengers. He joined the queue around 10 am and left the temple between 5 pm and 6 pm, Tirupati DSP Ravi Manoharachari told the reporters. The teen returned to Tirupati from Tirumala and was found wandering at the bus stand on Tuesday morning by RTC guards.
They contacted the teen’s parents and later informed the police. The RTC staff kept the boy with them until the police arrived and took him to child welfare home, sometime between 7.30 am and 8 am on Tuesday.
Before the RTC guards spotted him, he had called his mother from a borrowed phone, police said. “Since the rules of the child care home do not permit anyone other than the minor's parents to pick them up, we've sent th.