On a hot summer day in June 2010, two Indian children upset with their parents for hitting them left home.

The siblings - 11-year-old Rakhi and seven-year-old Bablu - planned to go to their maternal grandparents who lived just a kilometre away. But a few wrong turns and they were lost.

It's taken them more than 13 years to find their way back - with a lot of help from a child rights activist - to their mother Neetu Kumari.

"I missed my mother every single day," Bablu who grew up in orphanages told me on the phone. "I'm very happy now that I'm back with my family."

Video footage of their reunion at the end of December shows Neetu sobbing as she welcomes Bablu home, embracing him tightly and thanking god for "giving me the joy of holding my son again".

Bablu then hugs Rakhi, who had returned home two days earlier. Though the siblings had been in touch for a few years, they were meeting after more than a decade.

Bablu and Rakhi lived in the northern city of Agra with their parents Neetu Kumari and Santosh, who worked as daily-wage labourers.

On 16 June 2010, Neetu, who had been unable to find work that day, took out her frustration on Rakhi and hit her with metal tongs she used for cooking.

Rakhi and Bablu left home after their mother stepped out for an errand.

"My father would also hit me sometimes if I didn't study properly, so when Rakhi came to me and said let's go and live with grandma, I agreed," says Bablu.

After they got lost, a rickshaw driver gave them a lift to the railway station.

There, the children boarded a train where they were spotted by a woman who worked with a children's charity.

When the train reached Meerut, a city nearly........

© BBC