NewDelhi/Nagpur: In the 36 hours for which Dipti Sarna went missing, there was no clue where she stayed. The 24-year-old who works with Snapdeal in Gurgaon, was travelling in a shared auto on Wednesday at around 8.30 pm.
But now, details are beginning to emerge about Dipti’s ordeal that finally ended at 7 am when she called her father Narendra Sarna and asked him to pick her up.
Narendra told NDTV that while his daughter did not wish to press charges, she was abducted by four men at knife-point. “They blindfolded her and dropped her at some railway station at 3 or 4 am… (they) didn’t harm her in anyway and they even gave her food on time,” he said.
Opining that the kidnappers were “beginners”, who allegedly even left a gun with Dipti at some point, Narendra postulated, “They got afraid that is why they left her.”
On Wednesday night, she had hired an auto from outside Vaishali Metro Station. According to police, Dipti was on her way from Vaishali metro station to the old bus stand of Ghaziabad where her Narendra Sarna, a resident of Kavi Nagar, was waiting to pick her up when he received a frantic call from her friend.
“Dipti’s friend said that something had happened to her. They were talking on the phone when he heard her scream and the call got disconnected. He asked me to look for her,” said Narendra. He was supposed to pick up Dipti from the spot he was waiting at, like he did every evening, after she returned from her office in Gurgaon.
“Everyday, she would call us twice on her way back home. Once when she reached the metro station and then again when she was near the Hindon bridge. Her father would then pick her up,” said her mother Vandana.
Narendra said that sometimes, he would pick Dipti up from Vaishali metro station. “Why did I not do that yesterday,” he had said lamenting before her return. The family was afraid that Dipti had been abducted.
However, the family received good news on Friday morning. Dipti’s father said that she called him up in the morning and told him that she was in train in Panipat and coming to Vaishali. “She told me that she will come to Vaishali, but I asked her not to come to Vaishali and said I will come to New Delhi Railway Station to pick her.
Dipti Sarna with her family. Image courtesy: ANI @twitterDipti Sarna with her family.
“I don’t know how she came (managed to escape). She was calling me up from the phone of her co-passenger in the train. She was found sitting in the train. I don’t know whether she was in trauma,” he told reporters here.
Sensing danger, Dipti called her father again and said the auto-rickshaw was taking her in a wrong direction. Her mobile phone has been switched off since then. Superintendent of Police (City) Salman Taj Patil had registered a case and police launched a combing operation in the area, but nothing was found.
Ghaziabad residents on Thursday evening blocked traffic on national highway-24, and also staged a sit-in at the office of the senior superintendent of police.
Dipti’s mother said that her father picked her up at the New Delhi Railway Station. “She had called up her father in the morning and told him to pick her up,” she further said. After she went missing, her father had told the police that when the auto crossed the Hindon river bridge on Wednesday’s evening, Deepti called him and gave him the location.
She was also heard shouting at the auto driver for taking a wrong route, he had said, adding thereafter her phone was switched off. Police had soon swung into action and launched a manhunt to search the girl.
The police had traced the GPS location of her phone to Nandgram village, a few kilometres from the spot, where raids have been conducted.
UP Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s office had tweeted that he had asked the Ghaziabad Senior Superintendent of Police to “personally head the search operation”, and that several teams had been formed.
