The father of missing techie Kumar Ajitabh moved the High Court seeking a CBI probe into the disappearance of his son. The software engineer has not been seen after going out on December 18, 2017, to meet a person interested in purchasing his car, which he had put up for sale on the online portal OLX.
Justice AS Bopanna passed the order on a petition filed by Ashok Kumar Sinha, father of Ajitabh. He observed that the police have not been able to track down Ajitabh in spite of two FIRs registered.
In the writ petition submitted in the High Court, Sinha expressed his dissatisfaction over the investigation of the case by state police as they have not been able to produce a suspect even seventeen days after the incident.
Ashok Kumar Sinha, Ajitabh’s father, a resident of Navi Mumbai, arrived in the city as soon as he heard that his son was missing.
Ashok has also started campaigns on social media to locate Ajitabh, and is also looking for his son in hospitals in rural Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. “What if he is undergoing treatment in any hospital that we don’t know about? What if he is hurt?” he asked TNM.
On Thursday, an officer with knowledge of the investigation told TNM that they suspect that Ajitabh had chatted with the buyer on WhatsApp.
“We have reason to believe Ajitabh had messaged the buyer on WhatsApp. We have asked WhatsApp to furnish certain information which would help the investigation. But WhatsApp has not provided the information,” the officer said.
Investigating officers suspect that a person, or several persons, posing as a buyer on the online marketplace OLX, abducted Ajitabh when he went to meet them to sell his car. After a preliminary probe, the investigators had narrowed it down to three buyers. “We questioned two of them and we are keeping tabs on them, but the third user is a fake profile. The person registered using a fake address, and even the mobile number may have been taken using fake documents,” the officer added.