A Life of Being Lost and Found: He Was Kidnapped, Sold, Then Adopted

Taj Rowland was a very hungry little boy, stealing and scavenging at a teeming bus stop in southern India, when he was kidnapped off a steaming street, driven through encroaching darkness and dumped in pitch blackness at a village orphanage.

He doesn’t know how much time passed there. He was eventually loaded onto a plane, wearing shorts and flip-flops, and landed on a bitterly cold December day in Utah, surrounded by a weeping crowd of white people. An unsuspecting Mormon family grabbed and hugged him, planting kisses on his face as he cried and screamed. They swept the terrified, bewildered child into their suburban home and family.

They thought they had adopted an orphan from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It took a very long time for the boy to learn enough English to stammer that he already had a family – a mother and father and siblings – on the other side of the world.

Taj tells Inside Edition Digital’s Deborah Hastings why he is reliving and retelling his improbable journey, and why it should matter to others.