Navi Mumbai: Assistant Commissioner of Police Rajkumar Chaphekar, who had gone missing on Friday night, contacted the Navi Mumbai control room around 4.45 a.m. on Sunday to inform that he was at a station ahead of Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh, and would return by night.

“What led him to take such a step can be confirmed only after he comes back. As of now, we know he is safe and had gone to Madhya Pradesh on his own,” senior police inspector Smita Jadhav from NRI police station said.

A resident of Kharghar, Mr. Chaphekar had gone to a friend’s house at Seawoods Estate on Friday night for dinner. “At 1 a.m., he called his driver to pick him up. After getting into the vehicle, he kept his mobile phone and all his other stuff in the car and told the driver that he will be right back, and left. After 20 minutes, when he did not return, the driver went to check on him at his friend’s house and found that he had not been there,” Ms. Jadhav said.

Mr. Chaphekar, in-charge of the Economic Offences Wing, had joined the unit in the last week of January.

On Saturday morning, Mr. Chaphekar’s son Akash reached his work place. “He thought that probably he was working even in the night, but he was not there. A missing complaint was lodged with us by Saturday evening,” Ms. Jadhav said.

The CCTV cameras at Seawoods Estate showed Mr. Chaphekar getting into an Ola cab. The family and his colleagues were worried as he is a BP patient with high sugar level, and he had left all his medicines in his car.

“We have no idea what made him take such a step. He has never done this before. It could be due to some work pressure,” his daughter Neha said.