HYDERABAD: A B.Tech first-year student who went missing from her college in Hyderabad on July 7 was located in Mumbai on Sunday afternoon - courtesy an Instagram update. While her family was worried about foul play, police have learnt that the teenager escaped from Hyderabad of her own will, as she was stressed due to her studies.
"We will get to know all the details only after she returns to Hyderabad. But prima facie we have come to know that since she was feeling stressed out and, therefore, left the city alone...she is safe," said VVS Ramalinga Raju, assistant commissioner of police, Petbasheerabad division.
The incident first came to light on Thursday, when her parents filed a missing complaint with the Medchal police. In their complaint, they stated that the 19-year-old was dropped at her college - a private institute in Kandlakoya, Medchal - by a relative that morning for an exam. When she did not return till evening, the parents enquired with her friends only to find out that their daughter had not taken the test at all and had, instead, walked out of the college under the pretext of getting her ID card and phone, which she said she'd forgotten at home.
"My daughter was not carrying her mobile phone and she had no money on her when she went to college. During the investigation, police asked us whether she has a boyfriend and we clarified that she does not. In fact, she is a bright student and has high ambitions," her father told the media prior to his daughter being tracked down. He said that the family was also worried about the teenager being trafficked.
While a scan of CCTV footage from a bakery near her college confirmed that the student had left the premises alone with a bag, it did not yield any further details for the police. They got the first lead on Saturday when the girl's younger sister received an alert on her phone - it was registered with the BTech student's email address - about someone accessing the former's Instagram account from a different device. The location was found to be Mumbai.
"Her account was used from six different devices. Whether she accessed it herself or someone threatened her to open it, we do not know. It is obvious that someone who knows the ID and password opened it from another computer or phone," the father said.
Based in this lead, the local police alerted their counterparts in Mumbai, subsequently traced the girl down. She was found roaming the streets in Kalyan Nagar. "Since she was moving around aimlessly and under suspicious conditions, the local police there enquired about her whereabouts. She confessed she was from Hyderabad," an official said.
A police team from the city was sent to Mumbai to bring back the engineering student.
