The Delhi police crime branch and cyber cell traced a 17-year-old boy from Srinagar after 14 months by tracking down the IP address of his Facebook account.

A senior police official said, the boy, identified as Keshav Kumar, has been missing since May 8 last year from his house in Khajoori Khas in the national capital. A missing complaint was lodged by his parents the next day.

A team of cyber cell led by ACP N.K. Meena and inspectors Sanjay Gade and Sandeep Malhotra started working meticulously and systematically to trace the boy on the basis of his Facebook account.

“Sincere efforts were made to trace the user of Facebook account and its IP addresses from where it was being accessed and hard work of more than four months gave fruitful results. The IP addresses provided by the Facebook were found to be of different mobile numbers which were used to access the Facebook account of missing boy. The call details of these mobile numbers were sought from concerned mobile operators. After through technical analysis, it was found that the Facebook account of missing boy was being used from Dalal Mohalla in Srinagar,” said joint commissioner of police (crime), Ravindra Yadav.

On July 6, a joint team of cyber cell and crime branch raided at Dalal Mohalla where the situation was very tense and recovered the missing boy.

“The missing boy has been handed over to his parents. During interrogation, missing boy revealed that he had left the house because his father used to drink and beat him,” said the police official.