YouTube helps trace man lost for 40 years

An Indian man missing for 40 years was to be reunited with his family yesterday after a YouTube video of him singing a popular Hindi film song went viral.

Khomdram Gambhir Singh was 26 when in 1978 he left his home in Imphal, in the remote northeastern state of Manipur, and never returned, according to reports.

For four decades his family heard nothing. Then a clip showing a grey-bearded man singing a Bollywood song on a Mumbai street 3,300 kilometres away appeared online.

In it the singer identifies himself as Khomdram Singh of Manipur. A viewer brought the video to the attention of a local association in Imphal who informed Gambhir's family.

They recognised him as their missing relative and contacted Imphal police who spoke to their counterparts in Mumbai. Officers then tracked Gambhir down to the suburb of Bandra where he was living rough.

"He was making money as a beggar signing old Hindi songs," Firoze Shakir, who shot the video and uploaded it to YouTube in October last year, told AFP.

On Wednesday Imphal officers flew to Mumbai to take Gambhir back to his family. They departed Mumbai yesterday and were due to arrive in Imphal in the afternoon.