MUMBAI: Bored of sitting alone at home, a nine-year-old schoolboy from

decided to take a train to his father’s office in

all by himself. But when he reached

station, he lost his way in the process of changing trains; an alert passenger who came to his rescue handed him over to security personnel.

The boy, a class III student, is an only child. His father works in a private company while his mother is a nurse at a medical centre. On Monday, he had an exam at school and reached home earlier than usual. A source said that his parents had asked a neighbour to keep an eye on the child as his paternal grandparents who looked after him had passed away recently. When the neighbour stepped out to visit a temple for a brief while, the boy slipped out of the balcony door. He then walked down to Dombivli station which is near his house and boarded a CST train. He had no money and couldn’t buy a ticket, added the source.

“He had made up his mind to join me at my office in Malad. On a couple of occasions in the past when he has had a holiday at school, he has travelled with me to Malad and this time, he thought he could complete the journey on his own,” the boy’s father told TOI. After reaching Dadar, he got confused about changing lines. An alert passenger, Aniruddha, who had been watching him for sometime, guessed that the child was travelling alone. Concerned about the boy’s safety, Aniruddha took him to the Dadar RPF outpost.

“The RPF personnel were very friendly and my son wasn’t scared despite being surrounded by men and women in uniforms. After some gentle quizzing, he gave the officers my name and phone number,” the boy’s father said. The RPF told the father to come to the outpost with the child’s documentation for evidence.