An Indian man, who was abducted as a small child, has found his family using Google Earth.
Saroo Brierley was five years old when he fell asleep after sweeping trains outside Calcutta.
The boy, now 31-years-old, had expected his brother to wake him up, but found himself in a strange city when he woke up after 14 hours.
He spent time on the streets before being taken in by an orphanage and later adopted by a family in Tasmania, Australia.
After 25 years, Mr Brierley decided to look for his family, but he didn’t know the name of his hometown.
However, Mr Brierley overcame this using Google Earth, zooming in on dozens of images until he found the area he recognised.
“It was just like being Superman. You are able to go over and take a photo mentally and ask: ‘Does this match?’,” Mr Brierley said.
“And when you say, ‘No’, you keep on going and going and going.”
Mr Brierley also calculated the distance over a 14 hour journey – the exact time it took him to travel from his home town to the unknown city he woke up in. The distance came to 1,200km.
He drew a circle around Calcutta and soon found that his family lived in a place called Khandwa.
Mr Brierley travelled back to India and although his family had moved out, a neighbour remembered his mother and arranged for him to meet her.
Speaking of the reunion, he told reporters, “The last time I saw her she was 34 years old and a pretty lady, I had forgotten that age would get the better of her.
“But the facial structure was still there and I recognised her and I said, ‘Yes, you are my mother.’
“She grabbed my hand and took me to her house. She could not say anything to me. I think she was as numb as I was.
“She had a bit of trouble grasping that her son, after 25 years, had just reappeared like a ghost.”
