MEERUT: A social media video posted by a head constable in UP helped reunite a 77-year-old mother in Deoria with her son who had been missing for more than a decade. Ashwani Malik, 35, is posted in Amroha and has 45 lakh followers on Instagram.On Sept 3, a man scrolling through the social media platform in Mumbai paused at a short video of a gaunt, silent figure seated on a charpoy. Something in the man’s expression — blank yet faintly familiar — stopped him. A minute later, he was on the phone with his family in Deoria, UP. The man in the video, he believed, was his missing uncle, gone without a trace for over a decade. That same evening, a video call confirmed what his grandmother, 77-year-old Rasuma Bano, had long given up hope of ever seeing again: her son was alive.The video had been recorded and posted days earlier by head constable Malik, not just a beat cop but also an “influencer” in his own right with a growing reputation for using his reach to solve missing person cases. This was the fifth such case where one of Malik’s posts had helped bring someone home.Malik had noticed the man on Aug 23, sitting alone by the roadside as he returned from duty. The man appeared disoriented, unkempt, and emotionally withdrawn. “He wasn’t saying anything,” Malik recalled. “But he didn’t resist when we offered tea.” He and his colleagues, Mohd Salman and Kashif, brought the man—later identified as Mohd Salim—to their quarters in Moradabad. They gave him a bath, clean clothes, a meal, and time. Gradually, Salim began to speak, though his words remained sparse. Malik recorded a short video and uploaded it to Instagram, where he regularly shares clips of field encounters, public outreach, and missing persons.What the video didn’t show was that Salim had once had a life in Haraiya village under Mahuadih police station in Deoria. He had a wife, who died twelve years ago, and a family he couldn’t face after her loss. Overwhelmed by grief, Salim left home and never returned. For ten years, his mother, Rasuma Bano, lived with the uncertainty of not knowing whether her son was dead or alive. Her husband passed away during that period. Salim’s return brought home not just a lost son, but a fragile sense of closure.Amroha SP Amit Kumar Anand confirmed Salim’s identity and said the reunion took place formally on Sept 4 after the family travelled to Moradabad. “He had been missing for over a decade. Once verified, we handed him over to his relatives,” Anand said.“My grandmother never thought this day would come,” said Mohd Gufran, Salim’s nephew, who received the alert from his contact in Mumbai. “She broke down on the video call. After his wife died, my uncle had withdrawn from everyone. His return has given her a reason to live again.”For Malik, the case is personal — not just because he helped make it happen, but because it speaks to the kind of policeman he has worked hard to become. Raised in Muzaffarnagar, he joined the force in 2012 with a mission to change what he saw as a broken relationship between the police and the public. “In my town, the presence of khaki made people uncomfortable. I knew we had to change that—not through power, but through presence.“His journey into social media began in 2020, somewhat accidentally. A seasoned bodybuilder, Malik started sharing workout videos, which drew in a young audience. Over time, he used that traction to talk about his work, his encounters, and most significantly, the human stories behind the badge. What sets his account apart is the absence of drama. His videos are quiet, observational, often filmed in a single take. “I don’t understand the algorithm, to be honest,” he said. “I just try to help where I can. When someone sees a face they recognise and a family comes back together — that’s more than enough.”
