A BOY who was chained by the neck with shackles and starved by his dad has been found in a supermarket.
Ten-year-old Tikhon has now been taken into care after escaping from home in Russia in a desperate bid to find food.
The starving child escaped after his dad, a businessman and would-be politician, failed to secure the shackles.
The unnamed 46-year-old dad had rushed his pregnant second wife to hospital to give birth and Tikhon, left all alone, managed to free himself by breaking a wooden bar to which the chain was fixed, say reports.
Schoolboy Tikhon ran to the store in the village of Velikovechnoye, in the Krasnodar region, with the metal noose still clasped around his neck.
Shocked checkout staff quizzed him about the shackles and he told them his father had imprisoned him in a shed.
He boy begged the shop staff not to tell his father he had fled – but instead they called police.
CCTV footage from the shop shows he still has on the padlocked chain and firefighters were called to free him.
The boy told officers he had been regularly chained by the neck in the cellar or shed or fixed to a radiator in the family’s home, often for long periods.
Tikhon was taken for medical checks and later put into care in a social rehabilitation centre.
The Kremlin’s children’s ombudswoman Anna Kuznetsova intervened to call on the Russian Investigative Committee to probe the allegations about the businessman who has ambitions to go in to politics.
The child had been living with his father and stepmother, but now his real mother has demanded that the boy his removed from the businessman’s care.
“I am extremely concerned about his fate. I want him to be with me, and not with his tyrant dad.” said his mother, Viktoria.
She said the boy was “very worried that he will go back to his father, but I will do everything to prevent this” and called for her former husband to be punished.
Teachers said they had expressed concerns about the boy’s well-being but the authorities had taken no action.
The father – who has two children with his second wife – has been called in for questioning as the investigation continues.
He reportedly told police that the boy had locked himself in chains.
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