VIJAYAWADA: A 19-year-old girl, who had gone missing when she was four while going to school along with her brother in Chipurupalle of Vizianagaram district, was reunited with her family on Saturday, thanks to Vijayawada-based Mohan Vamseedhar Batchu, who used Facebook to help her meet her biological parents.
The girl, Kodipetla Bhavani, went to Vamseedhar’s house at Patamata in the city seeking a job as domestic help, but her destiny had other plans. To her elation, she spoke to her family after 15 long years.
The story nothing short of a miracle happened around 10 am while the house-owner Vamseedhar, who runs a consultancy agency called Vacancy Wall, was getting ready for his office.
When he sought Bhavani’s details such as Aadhaar card and others, during the interview, she expressed her inability to produce them and explained that she was an orphan and raised by her adoptive mother Jaya.
Jaya, who also hails from Vizianagaram, saw Bhavani at the railway station and took the girl under her wings.
After discontinuing Intermediate, Bhavani has been supporting her adoptive mother’s family by doing odd jobs. Out of curiosity, Vamseedhar searched the details of Bhavani’s family members on Facebook and other social media platforms such as Tik-Tok and Instagram. Though Bhavani had been separated from her parents when she was merely a girl of four, she recollected her brother’s name, the surname of the family and the village where she lived.
Bhavani told Vamseedhar that she used to go to school along with her brothers Santosh and Bhanu in Chipurupalle. Finally, as luck would have it, Vamseedhar zeroed in on Bhavani’s family members on Facebook.
“First, I suspected she was giving evasive answers only to get the job. To check the veracity of her claim, I keyed in her brother’s name Kodipetla Santosh in the Facebook search bar and came across around 20 profiles with similar names. Then I started messaging everyone seeking details of their family members and asking them whether anyone in their family had gone missing 15 years ago. To my surprise, I received a message after 30 minutes from Santosh, claiming that his sister indeed had gone missing when he was seven years. Santosh is the elder brother of Bhavani,” explained Vamseedhar.
Bhavani’s joy knew no bounds when Vamseedhar broke the news of his success in finding her brothers on Facebook. Bhavani, who told her friends and neighbours all these years that she had a family and had been separated from them due to a quirk of fate, could not wait to see her parents and siblings.
“She was so overwhelmed with joy after hearing the news that she lost no time to spoke to her brothers Santosh, Gopi, mother Varalakshmi and father Madhava Rao through a video call. They are coming to Vijayawada to take her back with them,” Vamseedhar told TNIE.