‘Little Buddha’ or ‘reincarnated Buddha’, missing in Nepal

A 15-year-old boy whose followers believe he is the reincarnation of Buddha has disappeared after 10 months of meditation in the jungles of Nepal.

Till Sunday afternoon, searchers in Bara district had found no signs of Ram Bahadur Bomjan, the boy from Ratanpuri who made global headlines last year after he was reported to have begun meditation, like the Buddha, under a peepul tree, living without food and water for over 10 months. Believers claimed the school dropout was either the reincarnation of the Buddha or a holy Buddhist monk and had supernatural powers, including surviving snakebites twice. As scores of volunteers and policemen began searching the dense forest of Char Koshe Jadi in southern Nepal to locate their enigmatic ‘Little Buddha’.