NEW DELHI: A report appearing in newspapers, including Indian Express, The Hindu and Mail Today, on Wednesday about a 21-year-old

NRI

woman from London,

Gauri

Bhonsle

, going

missing

and being rescued in

Saharanpur

on Tuesday has not only turned out to be false but is also suspiciously close to the storyline of a television serial, to be launched by Star TV shortly, of an

NRI

girl by the same name going missing from London.

According to the report in Indian Express, Gauri, an NRI girl from London, went missing on October 15 on her way to board a train for Malda,

West Bengal

, from Old Delhi railway station. The report said: "Days after Gauri reportedly went missing, social networking sites were flooded with demands to rescue her. Gauri reportedly had come to India from London and stayed in Mumbai, Rajasthan and Delhi before going missing. Many missing posters had come up in Mumbai and parts of London."

Mail Today reported that "Gauri Bhonsle, the 21-yearold NRI of Southampton in London, who had reportedly gone missing from New Delhi on October 15, was rescued from a village in UP’s Saharanpur district on Tuesday." The Hindu didn’t have the name of the girl but reported that "a 21-year-old British girl of Indian origin who had been missing since October 15 after she landed in Delhi was recovered from a villagein Deoband in Saharanpur district."

The story, in other words, was much the same. Indian Express also quoted the Saharanpur SSP Durga Charan Mishra to say, "We raided the house and rescued her." It added that the girl herself was not being able to recapitulate the events leading to her disappearance. The newspaper also said that the "police have informed the British High Commission in Delhi about her rescue".

Now, it turns out the story about the missing NRI girl from London is a hoax. Star TV sources said they are about to launch a serial about an NRI girl, annoyed with her parents in London, coming to India and going missing. For this serial, the sources said, Star had launched a "gimmicky and disruptive" promotional campaign. There were newspaper ads about one "missing Gauri Bhonsle" as part of the "disruptive" campaign and it created a buzz on social network sites.

SSP D C Mishra told TOI that the girl rescued in Saharanpur wasn’t an NRI by the name of Gauri Bhonsle. She was from Malda. When contacted, the UK High Commission denied that any British citizen by the name of Gauri Bhonsle from Southampton has gone missing. An official said, "The British High Commission has no evidence to confirm that a woman named Gauri Bhonsle had actually gone missing from Southampton." Sources in the High Commission said it learnt about a person missing by that name from ABP News.

ABP News is the new name of Star News, given in April 2012 after Ananda Bazar Patrika and Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV parted ways. So, they are currently not linked. ABP News has carried what appear to be news items (available in

Youtube

) about Gauri Bhonsle, the NRI girl, having allegedly gone missing. It even has one London Metropolitan Police officer by the name of

James Anderson

on camera saying that Gauri has gone to India. On probing the mystery of the fictitious report, it now appears that an abducted girl was indeed rescued in Saharanpur but how her identity got mixed up with Gauri Bhonsle, the fictional story of an NRI girl going missing, is still not clear.

SSP Mishra said that the girl who was recovered from Tanheri Bijurg village in Deoband was not Gauri but she had lied about her identity. "The girl, who belongs to Malda, went to

Shimla

with her boyfriend and stayed there for about 10 days. She then returned to Delhi to go back to Malda. On her way to the station she was given spiked food by taxi driver Manoj Tyagi. She was then ‘sold’ to Yogesh and Raju in Dehradun. From there the girl was taken to the village in Deoband."

Mishra added that the abducted girl managed to contact her boyfriend. "The boyfriend then told her that she should tell the villagers that she is Gauri Bhonsle, an NRI from Britain and she has been kidnapped," said Mishra. The girl then narrated the story to the villagers who informed the village pradhan who informed the SDM Deoband. The police then rescued the girl from the village.

When contacted, Indian Express editor Shekhar Gupta said he was in Pune and knew nothing about the report. He suggested that a senior editor be contacted instead. This editor, who declined to be identified, said, "Other papers have carried the report. As you can see it’s not an Express invention."

Mail Today editor Sandeep Bamzai directed this reporter to the paper’s associate editor Atul Chandra who said the report was filed by the Lucknow office of Express. "It came late and we couldn’t check if it was promotion for a TV show."

Hindu editor Siddharth Vardarajan directed us to a reporter, Atiq Khan, who said his report was based on a police briefing.

How were all these papers been taken for a ride when the ‘missing’ ad of Gauri said ABP News and Star Plus would search for her, indicating that it was a promo ? And who was responsible for taking them for a ride – the Saharanpur police, who accepted a cock-and-bull story and rushed to the media before checking the facts ? Obviously, these newspapers, too, didn’t check facts. Still, some of them didn’t hesitate to give details of posters about the missing NRI girl in London and Mumbai. In fact, Indian Express even carried a photograph of ‘Gauri Bhonsle’ from a social network community page, a photograph which happens to be that of the actor playing the role in the forthcoming serial.

Finally, what’s the role of Star TV? Was its "disruptive" campaign designed to mislead newspapers and earn some publicity for its upcoming show? Star India CEO Uday Shankar denied this. "This incident has nothing to do with us. It is not part of our marketing strategy," he said.

Asked about ‘news clips’ appearing on ABP News that apparently reported an NRI girl going missing, Shankar said, "What was run on ABP News was part of the advertising segment and not the news, and has been paid for by Star. The format might imitate a news format, again as part of a marketing stunt."

In response to a question on whether he thought it was ethical to mislead viewers by making the clip seem like genuine news, the Star India CEO said, "There is nothing unethical about it. One, we have always run disclaimers both in print and on TV. Two, we are only running an item saying somebody is missing. The person is an imaginary individual, so it does not in any way affect either any other person or g roup adversely."