Almost a year after Bengaluru techie Ajitabh Kumar went missing on December 19, 2017, a similar incident has come to light. Prasanna R, a 39-year-old techie, has gone missing since November 9. The Banashankari police have registered an FIR under section 363 of IPC (kidnapping) on November 12.

Prasanna is a former employee with global IT major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and currently working with an artificial intelligence firm. According to the police, Prasanna went for a morning walk on November 9 and did not return home. The worried parents tried to call him but his phone was switched off.

Arjun, the sub-inspector of Banashankari Police Station, who is leading the investigations in the case, said, “Prasanna worked in TCS for 10 years and since the last few months, he has been working with an artificial intelligence company. We have tracked his mobile phone and his last known location was in Dakshina Kannada district’s Murudeshwar. A kidnapping case has been filed.”

There have been no calls asking for ransom yet.

It was reported earlier, how Ajitabh’s family, unhappy with the proceedings so far, had succeeded in getting a favourable decision from the Karnataka High Court earlier this month to hand over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Ajitabh was reported missing since he left his Whitefield residence to sell his car to a prospective buyer whom he met on the OLX platform.

According to the official data between January 2017 to June 2018, accessed by The New Indian Express, on average, 40 persons— including men, women and children, go missing daily in Karnataka, but only half of them are traced.  The same data set said that out of 51,429 persons who went missing from 2015 to June 2018, 37,496 were traced. The report also said the rate of tracing missing persons had gone down in 2017 and 2018 compared to 2015 and 2016.