TikTok Video Manages To Find Missing People In India

Illustrations (Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - TikTok video accidentally manages to find a long-lost man in India. In fact, the video recorded by a policeman was made to encourage people to help poor people who need a helping hand.

He is R Venkateshwarlu, a man who has been missing for two years and is finally seen in a TikTok video made by an Indian policeman. In the video, Venkateshwarlu is seen under the overpass in the Ludhiana area. The location is about two thousand kilometers from his house in Telangana.

His son's friend Venkateshwarlu, who saw him for the first time, immediately informed his family. They then contacted police in Punjab state to help find him.

"I cried the first time I saw him again," his son R Peddiraju told the BBC.

Chronology

Venkateshwarlu, who has difficulty hearing and speaking, lives in a village in the southern part of Telangana. He has a wife and five children who work as laborers.

One day in April 2018, Venkateshwarlu went to work to another village in a truck. In the back of the car he fell asleep and the driver was not aware that there was a crook.

After traveling quite a distance, "The driver just realized my father was in the back of the truck and he dropped him off in the middle of the road," said his son, R Peddiraju.

Alone on a road he had never traveled, plus the limitations he experienced, Venkateshwarlu kept trying to find a ride to get home. Finally he found another truck willing to give him a ride.

But, unfortunately, after hours of traveling, he just realized the truck was going in the opposite direction. The driver then dropped him off at Ludhiana, an industrial city in North Punjab State.

Venkateshwarlu hanging around there. He lives on donations from local residents. His communication problems got worse because he didn't understand Punjabi.

His family tried to find him by asking the police for help in Telangana, but failed. So how did Venkateshwarlu finally be found?

A fortune

You could say how Venkateshwarlu was finally found was a fortune. So, ever since India was locked in to contain the pandemic of COVID-19, Punjab police, Ajaib Singh has been traveling around Ludhiana to donate food and essential items to migrant workers and the poor.

Singh documented his activities in a video uploaded on the TikTok platform. His account is quite famous with more than 800 thousand followers thanks to his charity videos.

Unexpectedly, one of Singh's videos uploaded in March accidentally recorded the figure of Venkateshwarlusaat. He recorded the video while distributing food to people living under a bridge in Ludhiana.

One of Peddiraju's friends who watched the video recognized the figure of his friend's father. Immediately he informed Peddiraju's family and reported the police. Ludhiana Police then immediately tracked down Venkateshwarlu's whereabouts and sure enough, they managed to find him.