Addiction to Facebook holds the key for police to trace a schoolgirl missing since February 28.
Twelve days after the 17-year-old girl, a student of a reputable city school, had gone missing, the police feel she is "off the radar".
However, she seems to have constantly updated her Facebook profile, changing its privacy setting making her inaccessible. While the men in uniform claim that they have obtained CCTV camera footages about the girl reaching the gate No. 2 of Patna zoo in a rickshaw and then boarding an auto-rickshaw and moving towards Raja Bazaar, attempts to recover her have proved futile until now.
"It seems that the girl had planned it all in advance and well, to escape. Until now, the police believe that she has fled and attempts are being made to recover her. Her mobile phone is switched off but the police have caught her from footages of some CCTV cameras the day she disappeared (February 28). The footages also show her talking on cellphone to someone. The police suspect that she had taken another cellphone with a different number and is using it, may be even now. The girl's Facebook page has been checked and she has been changing and checking her profile often even now. However, the police are trying to track her," Patna senior superintendent of police Jitender Rana said.
The girl, along with her father, had gone to the school on February 28 to pay her outstanding fees of around Rs 65,000 and appear for the Plus Two exams. But she asked her father to wait on the ground floor of the school and went to meet the authorities after which she never returned.
The school authorities said she had failed in the Class XI exams and had never attended classes after that. An FIR was lodged accordingly by the family the same day at Shastri Nagar police station. "Prima facie, it appears that the girl fled as she did not want her family to know that she was not attending her classes. With the Plus Two exams having started, she realised that her family will know the truth and she fled from the school itself secretly. She was in touch with many friends, mostly boys, and all have been questioned. The school authorities have claimed that she had been struck off the rolls of the school long back. However, it has been learnt that her form, regarding appearance in the Plus Two exams, had been forwarded by the school itself. This cannot happen without the consent of the school principal," Rana said.
The cops said that they were trying to find out the new cellphone number of the girl, which she was using. "She is off the radar as of now. The police cannot say whether she is in the city or out. She has a smart phone and is logging to Facebook regularly," an officer at Shastri Nagar police station said.
