Ibrahim Sharief

Bhubaneswar, Feb. 19: The state government has written to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to take over the case of missing Indian Bureau of Mines official Ibrahim Sharief.

The 34-year-old engineer, who was working as an assistant controller of mines at the office of the Regional Controller of Mines, has gone missing from the city on November 25.

The police, which was probing the case, seem to have reached a dead end and requested the state government to get the probe conducted by “another investigating agency”.

Though the CBI is yet to respond, sources in the state government said that the matter was “under process”.

Sharief, a native of Bellary of Karnataka, used to work for a Goa-based private mining company before joining the Bhubaneswar office of the Indian Bureau of Mines on January 27, 2011.

His mobile phone was last traced in Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh on December 4.

A team from the state police had searched hotels and lodges in Allahabad, but failed to trace him. On December 14, the password of his Facebook profile was found to be changed. Ever since, there was no activity in his Facebook profile. The police traced the server from which his account was accessed. It was from a cyber cafe at Joshimath in Uttarakhand.

“We had sought the help of our counterparts in Uttarakhand and had sent the photographs of the missing engineer. But, the cyber café owner failed to identify him,” said police commissioner R.P. Sharma.

His wife and brothers, who are living in the city, have been demanding a CBI probe into the missing case for long. They had even moved the high court seeking an order to that effect. They had alleged that he might have been abducted as his duty was to inspect mines in the state and as the mining operations had witnessed violation of norms.

“As the case requires an inter-state investigation, which includes Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Karnataka, Odisha and Goa, the case should be taken up by another investigating agency,” said a senior police official.