Four decades after going missing, Himachal man finds his way home thanks to his head injury

Rikhi Ram (Right). (Image: X)

A man who went missing from Himachal's Sirmaur district after losing his memory due to a head injury, has returned after 45 years and reunited with his family following another head bump that brought his memory back.

The man was just 16-year-old when went missing, according to a report by PTI.

The heart-touching scenes were witnessed when Rikhi, now known as Ravi Chaudhary, returned to his native Nadi village, near Nahan, last week, along with his wife and children. The family members of Rikhi were in tears as they believed that he was no more.

Rikhi received a warm welcome with musical instruments and flowers by his family members and villagers as he reunited with his brother and sisters -- Durga Ram, Chander Mohan, Chandramani, Kaushalya Devi, Kala Devi and Sumitra Devi -- who were in tears to see him alive after more than four decades.

Back in 1980, Rikhi was working at a hotel in Haryana's Yamunanagar when he met with a major road accident during a trip to Ambala. He sustained a head injury and went missing.

The head injury was so grave that it resulted in complete memory wipeout, with Rikhi even forgetting his identity and name. Later, his friends named him Ravi Chaudhary.

With no memory of his past, Rikhi moved to Mumbai, survived by doing small jobs and later settled in Maharashtra's Nanded after he started working in a college. Later, he got married to his wife, Santoshi and has three kids, including two daughters and a son.

However, a few months back, another head injury changed his life again. The old faded images of a mango tree in his village, Nadi, narrow paths and the courtyard of a house in a place called Sataun started appearing in his dreams. Rikhi realised that it was not dreams but memories, PTI reported.

Rikhi sought help from a college student to locate Sataun, and they came across a phone number of a cafe while searching for Nadi village and Sataun on Google.

Rikhi called the number and interacted with a person named Rudra Prakash. As the word travelled, one of Rikhi's relatives, MK Chaubey, acknowledged Rikhi's faded past, and he was united with his family members in Nadi after other details were correlated.

"Though nothing is impossible, such cases of memory restoration after injury have been rarely documented, and the exact cause could be known after medical investigation of the brain", mental health expert Dr Aaditya Sharma told PTI on Friday.

(With inputs from PTI)