Following the police complaint by the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) that a girl student had gone missing from October 13, the cops swung into action immediately and traced her when she was on her way to Hyderabad. They alerted their Andhra Pradesh counterparts who intercepted her in Ananthpur and handed her back to her relatives in Bangalore. The case of 19-year-old Bharati Gurjar is amusing too as she hadn’t gone missing because she had eloped with anyone or someone had kidnapped her. NIFT officials informed Residents Watch that since there were 10 days of college holidays, she had planned to visit Hyderabad with her friends without informing her college or family members. That was her undoing. But then, if she had informed, they would not have allowed her to go. Unable to decide between the two options, she decided to lie to the college authorities that she was going to stay with her relatives in Banashankari. But the college authorities smelt a rat and checked with her relatives if she had reached their place. Since her father was in the Indian Foreign Service, it was also a prestigious case for the institute. With her family’s permission, the college authorities filed an FIR because the cops cannot trace anyone’s call without the court’s permission. And that can only happen with an FIR. Once the FIR was lodged, the cops accessed the SMS records of Bharati and found that in one SMS, she had told someone she’s coming to Hyderabad. Tracing her GPS coordinates, the cops found that she had reached Ananthpur in Andhra Pradesh. They alerted the cops in the nearest police station who picked her and brought her back to Bangalore.
