GURGAON: The road to justice can be long. This one cut through nearly 500 villages in Haryana and UP in a search that took five months and burnt more than 10,000km worth of fuel.This was a search to find Anil, a man accused of kidnapping a teenager, making him work as a bonded labourer and torturing him.

It began last July after the boy - frail and maimed - was found by locals in Badoli village of Palwal.The 15-year-old has his left arm missing. He was dumped in the middle of nowhere and told to go. Anil, a dairy and water was all he could remember of his captor. He had one more piece of information, that Anil had two daughters, Riya and Siya.Locals alerted police and a PCR van took him to hospital in Nuh. When he was being prepared for surgery, he escaped barefoot and without clothes.

In acute pain, the boy climbed into a hilly area and reached Tauru in Nuh and took shelter at a deserted bus stop late at night. He walked back towards Nuh city, where a teacher found him, took him to a local health centre and informed police. His family in Bihar's Kishanganj was contacted.It took a while for the boy to get over his trauma and reveal his ordeal. "The victim was so traumatised he didn't initially reveal what happened to him to Palwal or Nuh police," a Govt Railway Police (GRP) source said.

"It was only after a local newspaper in Rohtak published a report about his plight that we got the alert at Bahadurgarh."GRP filed a case under 75, 79 of Juvenile Justice (care and protection of children) Act, 2015 and under BNS sections 118(2) (voluntarily causing grievous hurt using dangerous weapons or means), 125 (rashness or negligence that endanger human life or personal safety), 127(4) (wrongful confinement for ten days or more), 137 (kidnapping), 146 (unlawful compulsory labour), 289 ( negligent conduct with respect to machinery) and 3(5) (act done by multiple persons) because the boy had gone missing from Bahadurgarh railway station in Jhajjar on May 27.He had got off to find water, wandered too far, and missed his train, Farakka Express, that he was taking from Jind to his native place with his father and brother.When the GRP unit gleaned the details, they were shaken. They learnt the boy's left arm was shredded in a fodder-cutter and the severed limb was thrown into a waterbody. Soon after the accident, the bleeding minor was driven for hours along highways and then left to cope on his own in Haryana.

The captor had not taken him to hospital, just left him there with Rs 7,500 in cash.The boy left his Kishanganj home to work in Kangra in Himachal Pradesh. But when he wished to come back, his father Rishidev and brother Kailash went to Kangra to bring him back. They were on their way to Kishanganj in Farakka Express when the boy separated from them when he got off at Bahadurgarh.On July 29, Rishidev got a call from Nuh police, saying his son had been admitted at PGI Rohtak the next day.