Bangalore, Oct. 12: A Mumbai-based techie who had visited the Art of Living ashram near Bangalore for the Navratri festival has been reported missing since he checked out early on Tuesday, according to an ashram source.

Aditya Shrivastava's family and friends said the 31-year-old was to have left for Hyderabad by an overnight bus on Monday. The search began after he failed to turn up in Hyderabad on Tuesday morning and calls to his mobile didn't go through.

But an ashram source today said Shrivastava had left early on Tuesday, adding that it wasn't clear yet if he had left on Monday to catch a bus and then returned. "Our CCTV footage shows him leaving with bags around 5.40am in a cab yesterday," the source, who asked not to be named, told The Telegraph.

The footage shows a man walking out of the gate and then leaving in a white taxi. "Although we have a travel desk (that books cabs for guests and devotees), he didn't book the cab through us," the ashram official said.

"He checked in (at the ashram hostel) on September 30 and had been here for the entire duration of the Navratri festival," said the source who confirmed that Shrivastava was a devotee of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the spiritual head of the Art of Living Foundation. The ashram held its yearly Navratri activities, many of the devotees camping in hostels on the premises on Kanakapura Road, around 30km from the Karnataka capital.

Shrivastava's friend Antara Chatterjee confirmed the techie was to have reached Hyderabad yesterday and pick up his fiancée Kritika Saxena from the airport when she arrived from Mumbai. The couple, who are to marry in December, were to meet Kritika's parents who live in Hyderabad, Chatterjee said.

"He last texted his fiancée at 9.12pm on Monday to tell her he was boarding the bus and his mobile phone was running out of charge," Chatterjee added. That was the last his family or friends heard from Shrivastava, who works as a freelance IT consultant.

Shrivastava's parents live in Gurgaon. His brother Akshay reached Bangalore late last night.

In Ramnagara, a town that borders Bangalore, superintendent of police Chandra Gupta said a missing complaint had been registered. "We are working on the case," the officer told this paper.