Hindustan Times ST (Mumbai) - HT Navi Mumbai Live
Hopes float for families of missing people
MISSING SINCE 2012 Relatives of those who went missing from Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Raigad, Ratnagiri and Pune sift through data
NAVI MUMBAI: Fifteen- year- old Shubham Rishkumar Bind has been missing from his Ghatkopar house since January 15 this year.
Shubham was reprimanded by his teachers while he was caught copying in an exam. Probably upset about the incident, he left home when his parents were not around.
Till date, his parents are clueless about his whereabouts.
Like Shubham, several people in the city have gone missing leaving the police clueless to trace their whereabouts.
In a bid to trace the missing people, the city police in a firstof-its-kind initiative organised an exhibition showcasing photographs of people from Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane – from city and rural areas – Raigad, Ratnagiri and Pune – from city and rural areas – who have been missing from 2012 to March 2015.
More than 15,000 photographs – including those who went missing as well as those unidentified people who died in railway accidents – were put up at the exhibition held at the Navi Mumbai police commissioner’s office in CBD Belapur from April 28 to 29.
“This is our effort to detect cases of people who went missing or were kidnapped as well as find clues to undetected murders in these parts of the state. Only a family can feel the pain of a member going missing for years,” said Suresh Mengde, deputy commissioner of police (crime).
“If a man from Navi Mumbai dies in a road accident at Ratnagiri and the police cannot identify him, the case will be registered as an accident of an undetected person. If the fam- ily in Navi Mumbai is unaware of the accident, a case of missing person will be registered. Through this photo exhibition, we are trying to solve as many cases as possible,” he said.
Police commissioner KL Prasad said, “A missing person’s case could be related to several cases such as kidnapping, murder, accident and extortion, among others. Therefore, each and every case should be registered as soon as a complainant comes to a police station.”
“In 2014, of the 1,673 people who went missing from the area under our jurisdiction, 1,403 people were traced. This means 270 people are still missing,” said Prasad.
For detecting missing persons’ cases, we plan to get a new system though which we can show photographs from our database on the complainants’ laptop, he said.