Mumbai: Cops ensure runaway teen gets enrolled in acting school

(From right) Sunny Tomar with his father Raju (centre) and constable Rajesh Pandey

A 16-year-old runaway from Agra, who had come to Mumbai to become an actor, was finally reunited with his parents by the Mumbai police last week. The cops have also advised the boy's father to enroll him in an acting school.

On May 21, Sunny Tomar had taken a train from Agra and landed here on May 23. After spending several days making the rounds of filmmakers' officers asking for auditions
and staying hungry on footpaths, he finally walked into Andheri police station asking for help.

According to police sources, Sunny said he was told every day that auditions were closed because of the elections. For five days, he lived on the footpath with no money for food. He told the cops that he had wanted to call his parents and had even requested people to lend him their phone, but everyone refused to. That's when he went to Andheri police station and requested the police there to lend him their phone to call his parents. The officers suspected he was a runaway and while talking to him discovered that he had come from Agra.

They also found out that he had run away to become an actor earlier, too, but had landed in Delhi. There the Delhi police took the help of the Child Welfare Committee and managed to return him to his parents.

This time, the Andheri police took the help of the Shahganj police in Agra, who in turn informed his parents and reunited them on May 25. Constable Rajesh Pandey from Andheri police station, who has been assigned the job of locating missing people, said, "Seeing the boy's interest in acting, we requested his father to get him admitted to an acting school."

Sunny's father Raju Tomar said, "I am happy get my child back. We have spoken to the Jawahar Lal Nehru Acting School in Delhi and will be taking him there. Sunny told us if the police had not decided to send him home, he would have stayed in Mumbai and proved that he was a great actor just like as Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan."

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