‘Ye to Shankerba hai’: Mother finds missing son on Facebook after 21 years

It’s 4 pm, and at one end of a platform at the Mahrail Railway Station in Bihar’s Madhubani district, two stationary trucks stand waiting as a cow crosses the railway tracks dotted with polythene sheets. A group of women sit at the far end of another platform, waiting for a train – the only passengers in this nearly empty station.

For most, Mahrail railway station is a quiet, nondescript, blink-and-you-miss station on the Sakri-Jhanjharpur-Laukaha Bazar line under the Eastern Central Railway Zone. But for Ram Shanker Kushwaha, this is a place close to his heart — where he spent hours dreaming about trains..

This is where he would wait, looking for a chance to ride one, even if only to the next station. After all, his home is barely 400 metres away in Maheshpura village in Madhubani. It is also where a 15-year-old Shanker boarded a random train and eventually ended up 1,000-odd km away in Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior — an act that eventually separated him from his family back home for 21 years.

On September 7, Shanker, now 36, reunited with his family after a Facebook video posted by Gwalior Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Santosh Patel. The video, made after Patel visited the state-run Ashram Swarg Sadan, where Shanker had been living for eight years, featured a man in a muretha — a traditional headgear worn by North Indian farmers — introducing himself as "Shanker Kushwaha from Anand Nagar, Bihar”.

“I was drawn to his smile and mentioned it in the post that ultimately helped find him. I'm thrilled that my post eventually reunited a man with his family,” DSP Santosh Patel tells The Indian Express. “I was drawn to his smile and mentioned it in the post that ultimately found him.

I am thrilled that my post eventually reunited a man,” DSP Santosh Patel tells The Indian Express. It was on September 4, 2026 — Janmashtami — that Shanker’s oldest brother Lalit spotted the Facebook post. “With trembling hands, I dialled the number listed on DSP Santosh Patel's post," says Lalit Shastri, a priest who also runs a bike spare-parts business.

Shanker’s fascination with train journeys began early. According to his father Rajendra, he would frequently hop on to a local train and return an hour or two later. On December 6, 2005, Shanker undertook a train journey that would divide him from his family for over two decades.

It was Vivah Panchami, and Maheshpura was abuzz with festivities marking the celestial wedding of Ram and Sita — an event that drew sadhus and ascetics from across the country. “A sadhu from Ayodhya asked if I wanted to go with him.

I asked how he was travelling, and he said, ‘by train’," Shanker says. Without bothering to pack a spare set of clothes, Shanker set off to Ayodhya. What happened next is still hazy, blurred between train journeys. But both the police and the family believe he drifted from place to place, unable to tell where he was or where he was meant to go.

“He kept confusing ‘Jhanjharpur’ and ‘Jharkhand’, unaware that while the former was a block in Madhubani, the latter was an entire state to the south of Bihar,” says Lalit Shastri, Shanker’s oldest brother. In 2018, Gwalior’s Ashram Swarg Sadan found Shanker at the city railway station.

"I have no clear memory of how or when I reached Gwalior," Shanker admits. "I remember living around the Gwalior railway station for years, sleeping on platforms or outdoors. I didn't like begging, so I survived on food given by passersby or shopkeepers, and did odd jobs at roadside dhabas." Adds Pawan Suryavanshi, the shelter in-charge: “We kept him under medical care until he recovered.

He also spoke of a brother living in Delhi. Authorities later found out this was his brother Lallan Kushwaha.” Shanker’s 21-year ordeal points to a wider problem across Bihar and neighbouring northern states, where people, particularly minors, runaways and those vulnerable due to cognitive difficulties, can disappear along major railway networks and end up hundreds or thousands of kilometres from home.

Bihar Police data collected from Bihar Railway Police shows that between 2019 and 2021, 16,559 children were reported missing across Bihar. Of these, less than half — 7,219 — were rescued or returned. In 2025, 14,699 children were reported missing across Bihar, with the state having traced 7,772 of them.

Although there is no specific data on how social media has helped track missing people, GRP and state police have been making use of technology – from platforms like the ‘Khoya-Paya’ citizen’s portal and TrackChild to the national database, and, on occasion, social media.