At the Mulavukadu police station in Kochi, in the Indian state of Kerala, a man began turning up last month in the same clothes each time. He would drink from the water cooler outside the building and leave. Onmanorama reports that he carried neither a phone nor any identification.
Sub-inspector Thomas Pallan told Onmanorama that he had spoken to the man casually when he came for water, and that the man began coming regularly after that — saying almost nothing at first, then gradually opening up. Someone at the station found time to talk to him every day. As the conversations went on, the officers found he spoke English and Hindi fluently and could talk in detail about vehicles, engines and machinery.
What the police established was that he was 37, from Nagpur in Maharashtra, and held a master's degree in engineering. He had finished a design-stream master's at V K Patil College of Engineering in Ahilyanagar, been recruited on campus by Mahindra and Mahindra in Mumbai, and worked there for two years as a mechanical engineer on a salary Onmanorama puts at one lakh rupees a month. His parents died, his three sisters married and moved away, and he was left alone. He was suffering from depression and left home in 2022. He spent the next four years moving through Tamil Nadu and Kerala and reached Kochi in July. The Indian Express puts Nagpur about 1,600 kilometres from Kochi.
His own memory was what narrowed it down. Onmanorama reports that he recalled a telephone number, the years he had studied, and details about his professors and his college. Pallan told the Indian Express that the man gave the name of the college and of his home village near Nagpur; when the police contacted the college and sent photographs, it produced the number of a relative, and that led to the family. The police also asked stations in his home area to run checks and sent photographs to a number he identified as a friend's.
The part that made the difference is what the station chose not to do. Pallan said that people found living on the street are normally produced before a magistrate, who may order them lodged in a shelter or a mental-health institution, and that reunion with a family becomes very remote once that happens. In this case, he said, the station decided to gather his background first and see whether a reunion was possible. Officers also took him to hospital for a psychiatric assessment. Pallan told the Indian Express the finding was that there was nothing seriously wrong but that he needed rest; Onmanorama reports the assessment as depression, with reconnection to his family likely to help.
On Monday 17 August he met his brother-in-law, a sister and an aunt at the Mulavukadu station. The brother-in-law, a schoolteacher, told the Indian Express that the man had worked two years at the company he joined through campus placement before leaving them, that they had been clueless about his whereabouts, and that but for the Kerala police he would have remained beyond their reach.
The accounts differ on whether he was ever reported missing. The Indian Express reports that the family in Soanala filed a missing complaint with local police in 2022 but did not pursue it. Onmanorama, citing Pallan, reports that no missing person case was registered in Maharashtra.
Onmanorama reports that he did not want to leave Kochi, and agreed only after the police promised to visit him in a week. Officers drove him and his family as far as Vytilla, and they went on by bus through Bengaluru towards Nagpur. The police telephoned the family the next day to check where they had got to.
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확인: The Indian Express · Onmanorama · Madhyamam