Grieving relatives of Esther Anuhya, who tracked her phone and then launched a search operation that led them to the 23-year-old's charred remains, have accused the police of not helping them in their desperate attempts to find her

“Just like we traced our daughter’s body, we will find the accused in this case as well,” said Esther Anuhya’s grieving family members, the day after their frantic search for the 23-year-old girl led them to her charred and decomposed body in Bhandup (‘Missing woman’s charred body found in Bhandup’, January 17).



Esther's family members address mediapersons in the city yesterday

Talking to MiD DAY at their Goregaon residence, Esther’s uncle and aunt Sujit and Sunita Tambe alleged that the Mumbai Police had done nothing to search for the girl. They claimed that they had met with many top police officials in the city, including Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Niket Kaushik, but received only apathy in response.

Sujeet said, “On January 4 around 10 pm, she rang up and informed me that she would be reaching Mumbai around 5 am on January 5. But when she did not show up even at 10 am, we started worrying about her. He mobile phone was also switched off.” The worried family started searching, and informed her parents in Machilipatnam, who rushed to Mumbai.

“I went to Andheri police station to file the missing person complaint, but officers asked me to go to the Kurla-GRP because she went missing from Kurla. We approached Kurla GRP, but they asked us to go Vijaywada police station, as she had boarded the train from their jurisdiction,” said Sujit.

“Fed up with the apathy of the city police, we went to the Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Niket Kaushik, but even he ignored us. After that we approached Vijayawada police station in her hometown from were she boarded the train. We filed the FIR,” Sujit said, adding, “After filing the FIR in Vijayawada, we reached Mumbai and formed three teams consisting solely of our family members.

We obtained her Call Detail Records (CDR) and began searching for her at the locations where her phone had caught signals. Finally, after going to various places, we traced her phone to Bhandup, reaching there, and discovered her body with the help of local residents, who helped us a lot.” “We lost our daughter just because of the laziness of Mumbai Police. We have found her body, and now we will search for the accused as well,” he signed off.