Shubham Maheshwari, a Chartered Accountancy student who went missing from Aligarh on 18 February, has been found.
The 23-year-old student returned home on 20 March, a little over a month after he was reported missing.
“We received information that Shubham returned to Hathras on Monday night. He had gone to Nepal after starting from Delhi. He stayed in Nepal for a month and was reportedly teaching children there,” Ajay Sharma, station house officer (SHO), Jewar police station, told Hindustan Times.
Shubham Goes Missing
On 7 March, Shubham’s cousin – who wished to remain anonymous – had told The Quint that the police did not have any concrete leads on his whereabouts.
Piecing together the events of the day he went missing, Shubam’s cousin said that he boarded a bus from Delhi’s Anand Vihar inter-state bus terminus at 6:45 am on 18 February.
The CA Final student, a resident of a paying guest facility in Delhi’s Shakarpur, was on his way to visit his family in Hathras, UP. “He had been keeping his mother updated about his whereabouts via texts since he left his PG at 5 am,” his cousin said.
His mobile phone was last traced to a dhaba near the Jewar toll plaza in Aligarh’s Tappal area, where his bus had halted for a while that morning. However, his cousin says he “texted his mother, telling her his bus was on its way to Hathras after the halt”.
He last contacted his mother, Aarti Maheshwari, at around 9:40 am. However, after he failed to reach home, his family alerted the police.
When asked about the possible reasons behind his disappearance, Shubham’s cousin said: “Why would he keep his mom updated about his location if he wanted to run away?”
He is a brilliant student and has won awards for his excellence in academics.Shubham’s cousin
The #FindingShubham Campaign
His family and friends ran an extensive social media campaign under the tag #FindingShubham in a bid to trace him. The campaign also saw heavy participation from the CA community, with faculty members of CA coaching institutes and CA aspirants stepping forward to spread the word about the case.
Police Probe His Dissappearance
A missing person report was filed at Shakarpur early on 19 February. Later that day, an FIR was lodged at Jewar police station. The police have no solid leads, says his cousin, who also cited a report of a 22-year-old man who went missing after boarding a bus from Anand Vihar ISBT, merely days after Shubham’s disappearance.
“He was about an hour away from home when he last contacted his mother. How can a 6’2” person go missing in broad daylight? It doesn’t make sense,” his cousin says.
(This story has been updated to reflect that the missing student has been found,)
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