NEW DELHI: When 14-year-old

disappeared from his house in Mukhmelpur villager in outer Delhi’s Alipur in June 2000 and was never traced, his father,

, travelled across the country in his search. Every few months, he would take leave from work and trudge to police stations in other cities to enquire and halted at juvenile homes to find out if Javed was lodged there.

After 18 long years, there was a probable closure, if a very distressful one, for the Ali family when a skeleton draped in a familiar blue-andorange T-shirt and khaki pants was found in an unused tank nearby on Wednesday.

The skeleton was found in this tank in outer Delhi’s Mukhmelpur

The family said the T-shirt and the khaki trousers were identical to those that Javed was wearing on the day he disappeared. Police will conduct a DNA test to determine if the remains are indeed of the teenager, but the family seemed to have no doubts that their sad tale had come to an even sadder end.

However, all these years, Ali had held on to a slim hope of one day finding his son.

There was just 1 ransom call and no follow-up

I always presumed that he was trafficked as a child labour or that he had been sedated by his abductors and left somewhere from where he couldn’t return home,” said Ali. So the Delhi government excise department employee travelled to Mumbai, Chandigarh, Patna and Kolkata hoping to locate Javed in a juvenile shelter.

Ali met the successive police chiefs and also chief minister Sheila Dikshit for support. “I was ready to sell my house and other properties to get him freed from his kidnappers, but no one contacted us again after one phone call for ransom,” said Ali. Police and government officials assured the family of doing their best to find Javed, but little came of them.

The family started praying at temples and mosques hoping for a miracle. “At all religious festivals, whether Hindu or Muslim, I participated in the prayers,” a misty-eyed Ali said. “And I always scanned the crowds expecting to see my son’s face.”

The teenager’s friends, Pankaj and Dheeraj, had joined in the search for Javed. “We needed him badly because he was our best batsman and a cricket match with our neighbouring village was approaching,” remembered Pankaj. “For a year, we put up posters with his details.” Ironically, it was Pankaj who informed the police about the skeleton after learning about it from a labourer at a construction site.

Javed’s sister Zaeda recalled the afternoon of June 22 when the 14-year-old boy vanished. She said he left home for a grocer’s shop wearing the new khaki trousers for the first time. He had gone only to return an empty soda bottle but never came home. In the evening, a complaint was registered at the police station. “Soon the whole village heard the news joined us in looking for him,” said Zaeda, now 30.

Amid all this, a neighbour summoned Ali, saying there was a call for him on his landline phone, the only one in the locality. “When my father answered the call, a man with a heavy Haryanvi accent claimed to be holding Javed and would release him only if my uncle Chaman paid off some dues,” Zaeda disclosed to TOI. However, the family never heard from the caller again, and Chaman too vanished a few days later.

Wednesday was an emotional day for the Ali family. “My wife Shakeela identified the clothes on the skeleton. They were the last memory that she had of Javed so had no doubt,” said Ali.

Rajneesh Gupta, DCP (Rohini), said that the remains had been sent for forensic analysis. “We have taken the claims of the family into consideration and will conduct a DNA test once the forensic report established the age and nature of injuries on the skeleton,” the police officer said.