Boy takes 20-hour journey beneath a bus!

PALAKKAD: In an incident, like one taken out from movies, a 12-year-old boy undertook a 20-hour journey beneath a bus and covered nearly 800 kms. Manu who travelled  beneath the body of a tourist bus from Coorg to Malampuzha was taken home by his grandmother and relatives from Malampuzha police station to Bangalore where they were residing, on Sunday.A tourist bus had left  from Perinthalmanna to Mysore and returned. When the bus reached Perinthalmanna, the boy didn’t get down. While returning, the bus stopped at the golden temple in Kushalnagar in Coorg. As the tourists alighted from the bus to see the  temple, Manu who was studying in an ashram boarding school in Kushalnagar quietly creeped below the bus and found a seating place on a small steel angle frame, where the spare tyres are kept. The bus then left Perinthalmanna for the next trip to Malampuzha.As the tourists alighted from the bus to see the garden, the bus was taken to a workshop nearby, where the mechanic noticed the boy while applying grease underneath the bus. The boy was tired and covered with dust.The boy was handed over to the Malampuzha police station.Malampuzha police station Sub-Inspector Vijayakumaran said that Manu gave his father’s address and telephone number. Manu told the police in Hindi that he was not interested in studies and he had run away from school.  The police informed the father of Manu, Bimal, who is employed in New Delhi. The school authorities in Kushalnagar were also informed. It is on the directives of Bimal that the relatives of Manu who were residing in Bangalore came and took him from the Malampuzha police station.