Avneet Kaur got her start in the kid’s reality show, Dance India Dance Li’l Masters (2010) and has since done several projects in the entertainment industry. But, with no film background, it took time for the actor to establish herself. The 21-year-old, who was seen in Tiku Weds Sheru opposite actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui, says, “I struggled a lot. But, I wanted to be a part of Bollywood. As an outsider, to even get an audition is impossible.”

The Aladdin - Naam Toh Suna Hoga actor says she encountered several obstacles as she struggled to form connections in an industry she barely knew.

She adds, “After I got eliminated from the show, I felt that it was the end for me. No one talks about the contestants other than the winner. We, as a family, took a risk and stayed in Mumbai (instead of going back to their home town of Punjab) to look for opportunities. Getting people to see you for the first time is hard. It can take years.”

Siddharth Nigam in Aladdin - Naam Toh Suna Hoga

Mumbai: Keen to meet his screen idol and to work in the entertainment industry, a 14-year-old schoolboy ran away from his Bihar home and landed in Mumbai. While his worried parents looked for him, he withdrew money from their bank accounts and booked a hotel room for his stay here.

A police team, posing as casting agents, tracked him down and reunited him with his kin.

A class IX student, the boy had left his home in Begusarai last week. His father is a regional filmmaker. The boy stole a few bearer cheques, his father’s ATM cards and valuables from home. He booked a flight and landed in Bengaluru where he made a withdrawal using the ATM card. He then took another flight to Mumbai where he checked into a hotel in Malad.

“The boy was a fan of the show ‘Aladdin - Naam Toh Suna Hoga’ and its lead actor Siddharth Nigam. He wanted to meet Nigam and find work in the industry,” said inspector Datta Thopte of Malad police station.

The boy called up his mother and told her he was in Mumbai, but he wouldn’t share his location.

He made three cash withdrawals, totalling to Rs 30,000, from his father’s account to make payments at the hotel where he was staying. The last withdrawal was made at an ATM at Malad’s Liberty Garden.

His father sought help from a journalist in Mumbai, who approached Malad police with the teenager’s details.

“The boy’s phone was switched on. At one point, someone else answered his phone and said that he was his friend. He gave us different locations of the teenager,” said sub-inspector Nagnath Bansode of Malad police station.

Investigators checked the boy’s call records and found that he had dug out a film coordinator’s contact number from the internet and had been conversing with him. Police then posed as casting agents and called him for a meeting with Nigam near Infiniti Mall on Saturday. When the boy arrived, the police convinced him to return home. They made a video call to his parents to confirm his safety and then handed him over to his uncle who had come down from Pune.

In a separate incident, a senior citizen was reunited with her kin within hours with some prompt help from a WhatsApp group.

Parvati Salvi, 65, was spotted alone on a street by a passerby and was brought to Malad police station on Sunday. She said she was a farmer from Konkan and had walked all the way to Mumbai. But the police found no blisters on her feet and realised her memory was failing her.

Salvi told the police that she hailed from Guhagar and they decided to cross-check that piece of information. They contacted members of WhatsApp group, ‘Konkan Katta’, and posted Salvi’s photo and details. Members of the group hail from different parts of Konkan.

Within a few hours, the police received a response from someone in Guhagar who gave them Salvi’s current address. The police got through to her family at Kasam Baug in Malad (east) and they took her home.