The family of a young engineering student at Sharda University, Ehtisham Bilal, who went missing on Sunday, staged a protest in Srinagar seeking the help of J&K Governor Satya Pal Malik and other authorities.
Ehtishamas had called home on Sunday evening telling his father that he would board a metro to Noida from Delhi and that his sight-seeing trip had ended.
However, Noida Police said that Ehtisham, in fact, called his father from Srinagar and that his last location, according to the call details, was traced to the volatile Pulwama district of South Kashmir.
The police officials were quoted by The Times of India as saying that Ehtisham had pre-planned his travel to Srinagar and already booked a Go Air flight to Srinagar on October 26.
The Noida Police further said that Ehtisham was also spotted at IGI Airport in New Delhi with the help of CCTV footage.
Ehtisham's father Bilal Ahmad, who owns a hardware shop in Khanyar area of downtown Srinagar, said that taking cues from the police investigation, he went to Shopian and Pulwama districts of South Kashmir to ascertain the whereabouts of his son. But he could gather no information.
The visibly distraught family has appealed to the central government, J&K Governor and former chief ministers Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti to help locate Ehtisham.
"We had sent him to study. He is the only son we have. If something happens to him, the rest of us in the family will also die," Bilal said with watery eyes.
He said that after he came to know that Ehtisham and other Kashmiri students were roughed up by colleagues in the campus, he went to Delhi to see his son.
"Although I was asked by the police to lodge an FIR then, I refused to do so because I thought it is a trivial issue and it could possibly ruin the career of the students," Ehtisham's father added.
