Boy running 10 km home every night after work goes viral

New Delhi: Pradeep Mehra does not care a video of him going viral. He has no time for silly things, because he has got to run home late night after work.

Filmmaker Vinod Kapri filmed the 19-year-old boy from Almora in Uttarakhand running with a bag on his shoulder along streets in Noida on a recent night.

It was at 12 o' clock and the filmmaker's first impression was the boy might be in trouble. He caught up with the boy to offer him a free ride home. Pradeep Mehra declined his offer and began to sprint again.

The Indian Express reported him as saying that the reason for the boy's declining the free ride would make people fall in love with him. Meanwhile, the filmmaker's 2:20-minute clip has received nearly six million views so far.

When asked about his reason behind the sprint, the boy in the video said that he always ran 10 kilometres to reach his home, because he was practising to join Indian Army. He is working at a McDonald's outlet in Sector 16, Noida.

To the filmmaker's suggestion to practice in the morning, the boy said he got to cook and go to work at 8 am. Also, his elder was working and his mother was in hospital.

When Kapri told the boy about the probability of the video going viral, the teenager wondered about anybody recognising him and said that he was doing no wrong. He also declined Kapri's offer of a dinner with him saying that his elder brother would be hungry as he wouldn't cook during night shifts.

No amount of persuasion by the filmmaker to drop Pradeep Mehra home would work. He firmly declined Kapri's request, saying that it would come in the way of his daily practice.

After the video went viral, Kapri met him next day at the McDonald's and told him of the viral video. "What's the big deal in going viral. I haven't done anything wrong, I am just running," Mehra was quoted as saying.

When asked him to give a message to the world, Mehra replied that work hard and everything would be alright.