Thanks to Facebook, Hearing & Speech-Impaired Boy Reunites With His Family After 10 Years

Abdul managed to find an old friend whose name he remembered on Facebook and eventually tracked down his parents

Thanks to Facebook and the power of social media which helped an 18-year-old boy reunite with his family, 10 years after he had gone missing. The boy named Abdul Latif, who is hearing and speech impaired, had gone missing from UP’s Farrukhabad district when he was only 8 years old and was found crying on the streets of Fatehgarh Sahib.

Abdul, who is now a Class 11 student of Patiala School for the Deaf and Blind, managed to find an old friend whose name he remembered on Facebook and eventually tracked down his parents, The Indian Express reported.

When his father Tahib Ali reached his school to take him home, he couldn’t hold back his tears and said, “We moved heaven and earth when we lost Abdul in Ghaziabad ten years ago. We put up posters, we advertised, we tried everything we could but there was no clue as to where he had gone. We do not know how he landed up in Fatehgarh Sahib.”

Tahib said that a friend of Abdul managed to find their address after he connected with him on Facebook and sent his photograph a month back. Seeing the photo, the family identified him following which police formalities to take custody of his son from the school were completed.

The family heaped praises on Colonel Karminder Singh (retd), Secretary of the society which runs the Patiala School for Deaf and Blind, for keeping his son safe and healthy for 10 years. Not just that, after knowing that the boy was a Muslim, he also tried to get help from Muslim organisations and encouraged him to practice his own religion.

“Paida humne kiya lekin iski parvarish inhone ki. Badi mohabbat se rakha. Sabhi yahan iss se mohabbat karte hain. Itni mohabbat hum nahi de paaye kitni ye sabhi log kar rahe hain (We gave birth to him but these people have raised him.They have all kept him with lot of love. All here love him a lot. We could not give him this amount of love which they give him),” Tahib Ali told The Indian Express.

What a heartwarming story!