It has been eight months since Tarun Gupta — the 16-year-old autistic teenager — got mixed up with an election procession near his home in Colaba and went missing. Since then, Tarun's father Vinod Kumar Gupta has invested over R15 lakh running pillar to post to find his missing son.

However, amid the entire COVID-19 scenario, on Sunday at 10:30 pm, Vinod Kumar received a call from a resident of Varanasi saying he fed Tarun a few days back. "He [the resident] said that he spotted Tarun on the main road outside Varanasi station about eight days back and that Tarun was not wearing his spectacles as he does in the pictures that are being circulated. He said that Tarun was sitting in a queue outside the station asking for food and that he himself fed him," Vinod Kumar told mid-day. "I have a few relatives and friends who live in Varanasi and have reached out to them, asking them to look for Varun nearby the station. But it is tough during the lockdown," he added.