Saroo Brierley (born c. 1981) is an Indian-born Australian businessman and author who, at the age of five, was accidentally separated from his biological family.

He was adopted out of India by an Australian couple but was reunited with his original family 25 years later after finding his hometown via Google Earth.

An autobiographical account of his experiences, A Long Way Home, was published in 2013 in Australia, released internationally in 2014, and adapted into the 2016 Oscar-nominated film Lion, starring Sunny Pawar and Dev Patel as Saroo, David Wenham as his adoptive father, John Brierley, and Nicole Kidman as his adoptive mother, Sue Brierley.

Saroo Brierley was born Sheru Munshi Khan,[1] in about 1981, in Ganesh Talai, a suburb within Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh.

His mother, who chose not to petition for a divorce although she legally could have done so, worked in construction to support herself and her children but often did not make enough money to feed them all, and could not afford to send them to school.

Guddu sometimes obtained odd jobs such as washing dishes in a restaurant and sweeping the floors of train carriages.

Saroo and his brothers also resorted to pilfering food from bales of rice and chickpeas at the local railway station as well as unwatched fruit trees and vegetable patches.

[2][3] One evening in or about 1986, Guddu said he was going to ride the train from Khandwa to the city of Burhanpur, 70 kilometres (43 mi) to the south, and reluctantly allowed the five-year-old Saroo to join him.

Saroo's rail journey eventually ended at the huge Howrah railway station in Calcutta, West Bengal (now known as Kolkata), and he fled when someone opened the door to his carriage.

[2][3] He attempted to return home, initially by boarding different trains, but these proved to be on suburban lines and each one eventually took Saroo back to Howrah railway station.

The staff there attempted to locate his family, but Saroo did not know enough for them to sufficiently trace his hometown, and he was officially declared a lost child.

A few weeks after her sons failed to return home, police informed her that Guddu's body had been found near the railway tracks, having been killed by an oncoming train a kilometre (0.6 mi) from Burhanpur station.

Years later, she opted to stay in Ganesh Talai rather than moving in with Kallu's family in Burhanpur so that Saroo would be able to find her if he returned.

[2] In 2012, Saroo travelled to Khandwa in India and asked residents if they knew of any family that had lost their son 25 years prior.

Saroo was portrayed in the film by both newcomer Sunny Pawar and Dev Patel, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance.