Patiala, October 8
A Class 8 student from Patiala bunked his classes and cycled over 250 km to meet his favourite YouTuber in New Delhi. The boy, whose parents had to lodge a missing complaint with the police, was reunited with his family in Patiala by the Delhi Police on Friday evening.
The boy, missing since October 4, was traced near the residence of his favourite YouTuber Nishchay Malhan running a channel in the name of TriggeredInsaan. Malhan has over 1.69 crore subscribers.
The boy has been living with his grandparents in Patiala while his parents live in Chhattisgarh. The father of the boy is said to be an online tutor on stock markets.
The boy was tracked from the watch history on the mobile phone of his grandfather. The last video he watched was of a boy from Bihar, who had pedalled to meet Malhan. Seemingly that very video of the fan from Bihar had prompted the boy to do what he did, because the YouTuber had lunch with his fan from Bihar and made a video.
A CCTV video of Shambu barrier, an interstate toll plaza on the Punjab-Haryana border, had shown the boy entering Haryana. The boy safely reached the residence of the YouTuber. However, Malhan was in Dubai to attend a family function during the time of the incident. The police first found the boy’s bicycle parked outside the residence of Malhan and then the boy was tracked after a few hours.
Manish Bushan, uncle of the missing boy, who had approached the YouTuber through a microblogging site, tweeted: “We finally found the boy. Thanks everyone for the help.”
Notably, the YouTuber had tweeted several times to seek the help to find the kid. He has already tweeted after the boy was tracked: “Glad he is safe.”
Patiala SSP Deepak Pareek said they have handed him to the family members. He said the boy was so keen to meet his favourite YouTuber that he didn’t mind to spend one night near Ramlila stage at Delhi while some nights in a car, which was unlocked.
Meanwhile, Pareek asked the parents to limit the use of mobile phones by their kids.
