Class 9 Assam students rescued after hatching plan to go to Mumbai, start business

Since the two were aware their families would not have approved of the idea, the duo decided to travel to Mumbai without informing them, the police officials said.

The Assam and Mumbai police took the two teens into their custody at the Mumbai airport on Thursday morning.

Earlier, the Mumbai police control room received information that two kids — a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old — from Tinsukia, Assam, had left for Mumbai on Wednesday without informing their families. The teenagers had boarded IndiGo flight 6E 115 to Mumbai.

The boys’ families had filed a missing persons’ complaint at the Doomdooma police station in Assam, following which the Assam police contacted their counterparts in Mumbai and sought help.

API Sandeep Shinde from the Sahar police station, airport staff, customs, and CISF officials reached the T2 terminal when the said flight landed early Thursday. The two kids were taken into safe custody and their family members, relatives and officials from Doomdooma police station were informed.

Hatched plan during vacation

The mother of the 15-year old, who is also a school teacher, said she suspected the two were in touch over mobile phone during the Christmas holidays.

“On Wednesday morning I saw that the safe in my wardrobe was opened and around 80,000 was missing. Initially I thought servants could be behind this, but later I discovered that the mobile phone she used to give to her son is also missing,” she said.

When she called on the number, he disconnected and later switched off the phone. She then called his school and was shocked when the teacher informed her he hadn’t gone to the school that day. His friend didn’t go to school either.

She got scared and started to look for the son and his friend in the area with her husband, relatives, friends and the other boy’s family. The family also approached the local police and filed a missing person’s complaint.

Hotel executive’s alertness and first lead

The family put appeals and messages on social media about the two teens and sought help as local media also made news of the two boys. Fortunately, an executive of the same hotel (60-kms away from their home) where the duo had stayed for sometime, identified the two in the news reports. He immediately contacted the police. The family of one of the boys also spoke to the hotel executive.

“He told us that they had left for the airport and also shared the cab driver’s contact. When we contacted the cab driver he told us that the boys were talking about plans to go to Mumbai via Kolkata. We now had an idea that they were heading to Mumbai. I used my friend’s help who is in customs, and we managed get the details of the passengers in two Mumbai bound flights from Dibrugarh airport. We finally got confirmation at around 11pm about the two boys on board IndiGo flight 6E115 to Mumbai,” said the uncle of the 15-year old.

The family through Assam police informed Mumbai police control room and API Sandeep Shinde and his team received the teens at the Mumbai airport. Had they left the Mumbai airport premises, we would have never found them again,” he added.

AI, investment business, Japan

The two were influenced by Elon Musk’s success stories, especially, the younger one, who had several business ideas and the elder one was looking after the funding part. The two had collaborated. There was also a third student in their group, but he didn’t turn up and said that he would join them later, the uncle said.

The two had been seeing videos of businesses using AI on social media, and out of curiosity, they hatched a plan to come to Mumbai for the business. They had plans to bring all youngsters who thought like them onto one platform and collaborate for a common business goal. Since their families would not have approved of their decision to start a business, they decided not to keep them in the loop. They bought air tickets using the cash, with one of them carrying his Aadhar card and boarded the flight on Wednesday afternoon,” the uncle told The Indian Express.

He added that both had failed in certain subjects in unit tests and were also scared of how the family would react, hence they decided to run away.

“With god’s grace I got my son back. We are still trying to figure out what trigged this,” said the mother of the15-year old. His family members said he was a little depressed because he failed and he thought is family would have been very upset.

“We will rope in professional counsellors to counsel the boys so that they don’t repeat this in future,” his uncle said.

“Following due process and after preliminary counselling, we handed over the kids to their parents,” said Sanjay Govilkar, senior Inspector of Sahar police station.