Kin of Bihar man, gone missing in Bengaluru in Dec 2017, demands CBI probe

For the family members of 30-year-old Kumar Ajitabh, who has gone missing since December last year, it has been an agonising wait.

The family members, who were in Delhi recently, is now demanding a CBI probe into his disappearance.

Ajitabh, originally from Bihar, was working in Whitefield, Bengaluru for the last seven years. He had secured admission in IIM Calcutta for an executive MBA course, for which he needed funds and as he had to relocate, he had decided to sell his newly-bought car.

He had posted an advertisement on online shopping platform OLX on November 29, 2017, using which criminals abducted him and took away his car on December 18, 2017, his family said.

Ajitabh's sister Pragya Sinha told reporters in Delhi that they had been running from pillar to post.

The case was first investigated by the Whitefield police station in Bengaluru. On January 2, ?Ajitabh's father filed a writ petition in the Karnataka High Court, seeking a CBI investigation into his son's disappearance.

The high court ordered the formation of a Special Investigation Team (SIT) on January 16 and later, transferred the case to the CID on February 26. Till date, the Karnataka CID is probing the matter with no fruitful results, Sinha said.

She added that they wanted a CBI probe in the case that was 222 days old now.

Sinha wondered if something as important as the WhatsApp data was still not procured under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), how could anyone be satisfied with the investigation.

"What are they (the CID) waiting for? Do they want WhatsApp to come back to them with the reply that 'we delete our records after a year and we do not have the data anymore'?," she asked.

Ajitabh had checked his WhatsApp messages 10 minutes before his location was last traced. But neither Ajitabh nor his red Maruti Suzuki Ciaz car or phone or SIM card was found so far, Sinha said.