Patiala: Having travelled from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu to Patiala in Punjab, 68-year-old Sundari broke down on seeing the son she had searched for over 23 years. Overcome with emotion, she bent down to touch Prakasam’s feet.Prakasam, or Prakash, had walked out of his Coimbatore home at 16 in 2003 after a quarrel with his younger brother over a two-wheeler. More than two decades later, the mother and son reunited at Lachkani village in Patiala. Struggling to speak, he could only whisper, “Prakasam.”After leaving home, the teenager telephoned a neighbourhood shop from Chennai two months later and then disappeared without a trace. His father, Ramamoorthy, a watchman, died of cancer in 2021 without learning what had happened to his son, while Sundari moved to Neelambur, took up vegetable farming and continued searching for him for more than two decades.Unknown to the family, Prakasam allegedly ended up as a bonded labourer at a dairy farm near Amritsar, where he was forced to work without wages, kept under CCTV surveillance during the day and locked inside his room at night. He was rescued around 2022 after a video of his alleged captivity surfaced, according to Sukhpal Singh of the Patiala-based NGO Apna Farz Sewa Society, which later took him to its shelter in Lachkani village.Traumatised and barely able to speak, Prakasam could initially utter only fragments — “Tamil Nadu” and “Prakasam”. Those clues prompted Subhash Chander, a retired Haryana vidhan sabha secretary who counsels residents at the shelter, to begin tracing his identity in 2023.With the help of contacts in Chennai, including a journalist, Chander pieced together Prakasam’s story over the next three years. The trail finally led to Coimbatore, where Sundari immediately recognised her son from a photograph.The NGO insisted on formal verification before handing him over. Armed with little more than a faded 2003 ration card, Sundari approached the Coimbatore district administration, which coordinated with officials in Patiala to establish the family’s identity through school and labour department records.“After the Coimbatore DC coordinated with us, we ensured arrangements were immediately made to confirm their identity, which finally led to the reunification of mother and son on Jul 28,” Patiala deputy commissioner Himanshu Aggarwal said. He said an investigation into his alleged years as a bonded labourer would follow, with compensation to be arranged for the family.Earlier this month, when Prabhu travelled to Punjab, Prakasam instantly recognised his younger brother despite the 23-year separation and ran to embrace him. “I feel very happy and it feels as though the god we worship has come home in the form of our son,” Sundari said through tears before feeding Prakasam with her own hands.
