For 13 years, a 16-year-old vanished from home. Then Udupi police found him in Bengaluru

(Fifth from left) Ananthakrishna Prabhu went missing as a teenager in 2012 and was traced by Udupi police in Bengaluru in 2025. (Image credit: Twitter)

A 13-year mystery has been solved by Udupi police who have located a man, now 29, who went missing as a teenager after leaving home to visit a temple and never returning.

Ananthakrishna Prabhu, who was 16 when he vanished from Mundkur in Karkala on December 6, 2012, has been found living and working in Bengaluru, reports The New Indian Express.

The breakthrough came after a special investigation team dedicated to tracing long-term missing children reopened the cold case.

According to Udupi Superintendent of Police Hariram Shankar, the boy had left home after making a mistake in his school examinations and was too afraid to face his family.

“He worked for two years at a factory in Sakleshpur, where his employer supported him financially to continue his education. He is now employed as an interior designer in Bengaluru,” SP Shankar was cited by The New Indian Express as saying.

The investigation, which spanned a year and a half, was led by PSIs Eranna and Sudarshan along with six other staff. Police were able to trace Ananthakrishna after an old photograph was matched with his Aadhaar card photo. Leveraging their network, they confirmed a person in Bengaluru had sheltered him and, following multiple leads, successfully pinpointed his address.

For his family, the wait has been an agonising ordeal. His father, Prabhakar Prabhu, who runs a shop in Mundkur and is part of the local temple administration, had filed a missing person’s complaint at the Karkala Rural police station the day his son disappeared.

“On the day he went missing, people saw him travelling by bus. We searched for him in many places and kept praying all these years. We still cannot believe that the police have actually found him,” the overwhelmed family stated.

In a poignant twist, the police revelation that Ananthakrishna had quietly returned to Mundkur two years ago to see his parents from afar, without making his presence known, added a layer of heartbreak to the long separation. He had harboured a dream to build his own house, buy a car and only then return home properly.

SP Shankar emphasised the department’s commitment to such cases, noting that all missing children cases are kept open. “All missing children cases are kept open and transferred to the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit in the CID after one year, to trace the children,” he explained.