Missing Delhi girl cremated in Punjab

ASHOK KUMAR

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The mystery surrounding the disappearance of a young fashion design student a fortnight ago from a rented accommodation in Laxmi Nagar here, has deepened with the recovery of her body from railway tracks in Abohar in Punjab.

Twenty-one-year-old Prachi, pursuing diploma in fashion design from an institute in Hauz Khas, was staying with her sister Sakshi, a Master of Computer Applications student, at a rented accommodation in Laxmi Nagar. She had gone missing on April 20. The matter came to light on that day when Sakshi, who had gone to attend a function at her aunt’s place in Najafgarh, tried to contact Prachi on her mobile phone. As there was no response, Sakshi rushed back to Laxmi Nagar fearing that something was amiss and found the room locked from outside. The room was opened and Prachi’s mobile phone was found inside.

The matter was reported to the police and the closed-circuit television footage showed that Prachi boarded a Metro train to reach Chandni Chowk hours before she disappearing.

“The police scrutinised the past six months’ call details of her mobile phone and probed the case from all possible angles, but there was no breakthrough,” said one of the victim’s relative, who was not willing to be named.

The case took a turn for the worse this past Friday, when an Abohar-based businessman read about Prachi’s disappearance in a newspaper on his recent visit to Delhi. He approached the police saying that the woman was found dead in Abohar on April 21.

“The story emerged that Prachi was found dead by the Punjab Police on railway tracks in Abohar on April 21, but the police cremated her as an unidentified body without going through the details of missing persons on ZIPNET. The businessman had read about the discovery of her body in Abohar and when he read about her in Delhi’s newspapers, he approached the Delhi Police. It is sheer negligence on the part of the Punjab Police that they made no efforts to identify the body and just cremated her. They did not even update the ZIPNET about the recovery of her body,” said the relative. Prachi’s picture was also circulated on social networking website Facebook by her friends seeking her whereabouts.