Calcutta, June 2: Did the tsunami steal young Arvind from his family or did he survive the wall of water that swept Car Nicobar only to become the target of two kidnappers?

Police have announced a reward of Rs 20,000 for information about M. Sreenivasan, known as Arvind, the son of Indian Air Force officer M. Venkatraman who had been posted at the Car Nicobar base. The 13-year-old boy has been missing since the tsunami struck on December 26.

Priests in charge of the Nirmala relief camp at a Port Blair school, where hundreds of people evacuated from the Nicobar group of islands had been staying, recalled seeing Arvind on campus. Subsequently, two men claiming to be his uncles came to the school and took the boy away, they said.

However, there is no documentation of Arvind’s stay.

Venkatraman is currently in Port Blair and is waiting for Nirmala officials to show him video footage of the camp inmates shot during the first few weeks.

The frantic father, who returned with his wife and daughter to Pondicherry before heading for his new posting in Tambaram, has been criss-crossing the country in search of his son.

Venkatraman first came to Calcutta, having spoken to astrologers who told him Arvind was alive and in a place called Bankura or Bankra. The IAF officer got in touch with Childline Howrah, an emergency service for children, which helped him in the search across the state.

“We then learnt from a website that a 13-year-old boy named Arvind had been at one of the camps on the island,” said a Childline spokesperson. Venkatraman then headed back to Port Blair.