The relationship of the two boys with the Salem DBAI began in 2006 when during an intervention the staff of the Salesian Childline initiative, the officers of the Department for Child Labor and other social workers discovered that in the Andipatti area Panangadu there were over 30 children involved in the production of silver anklets. Among these, there were also Kumar and Rajkumar.
As a first step in their rehabilitation, the minors were welcomed at the DBAI, and they immediately started looking for information on these two siblings. They could not remember their parents or where they were.
They started from the owner of the anklet workshop, Mr. Selvam, and through multiple and articulated passages they went back to the family of origin. Their father, who had entrusted them to Mr. Selvam because he could not keep them, was now dead; but the mother, an older sister and several uncles were still alive and the two brothers wanted to see them again.
This is how their meeting was organized and on 29 October, in the structures of the DBAI, in the presence of the district manager for the protection of minors, Ms Uma Maheswari, Fr Raj and other local authorities and prominent figures, as well as other protagonists of the research, Kumar and Rajkumar, after 18 years, are finally reunited with their families.
