A class 10 student, whose 'murder' sparked violence in Madhubani district of Bihar, was found alive in Delhi on Monday.
The boy, Prashant Jha, eloped with his girlfriend Preeti Choudhary on Sept 7 owing to family opposition to their relationship over caste differences. Both were classmates at the Indian Public School in Madhubani. They were found alive at Mehrauli in the national capital.
A resident of Delhi saw the photos of Prashant and Preeti on Bihar-based TV channels. He even saw them at a shop on Monday and informed the Bihar police, who reached Delhi to verify their identities at the Mehrauli police station.
"I have spoken to Mehrauli police officer Jarnail Singh. He has told me that the boy and a girl had been found," Hindustan Times quoted Bihar's DGP Abhayanand as saying.
"They first reached Muzaffarpur where they sold a mobile phone before catching a train to Ranchi. Thereafter, they went to Darjeeling and Jammu before arriving in Delhi," Daily Mail quoted Abhayanand DGP as saying.
According to the police, Prashant's father lodged a missing complaint report on the same day when he ran away from his house. Preeti's father lodged an FIR on Sept 11, blaming Prashant of abducting his daughter.
Their disappearance sparked violence in Bihar after Prashant's family claimed that the headless body found by the police on Oct 3 was their son. After postmortem, police found out that the corpse was of a 27-year-old man.
The situation became worse when police refused to hand over the body to the boy's family.
Prashant's mother and grandmother went on a hunger strike against the police, after which his friends and sympathisers resorted to violence, The Times of India reported.
A police station and several government vehicles were set on fire in Madhubani. And police had to open fire killing two people.
The state opposition parties called for a statewide bandh over his 'death' on the same day when both the girl and the boy were found alive.
Worried about the situation in the area, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar transferred Madhubani DM and SP and also ordered a judicial probe into the case.
After the discovery of the boy and girl Nitish Kumar said, "All is well that ends well".
