Police say Ehtisham Bilal’s last location was Jammu, from where he reportedly made a call. But his father says there’s no reason he would have gone there.
New Delhi: Ehtisham Bilal, a Kashmiri first year student of medical imaging technology at Greater Noida’s Sharda University, has gone missing.
Ehtisham has not been traceable since Sunday, 28 October, and the university has now filed a missing person’s complaint at the Knowledge Park police station.
His father, Bilal Ahmed Sofi, has also filed a separate complaint at the Khanyar police station in Srinagar, where the family lives.
Ehtisham was among a group of students mistaken for Afghans and attacked on campus on 4 October, after which a police case had been registered against the attackers and the university had been shut for a few days.
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‘He is in Jammu’
Arvind Pathak, station house officer at the police station, said: “Based on his mobile phone records, his last location was Jammu. We are investigating further. We will get more details in the next few hours.”
Ehtisham, who lived in a hostel on campus, left Greater Noida on Sunday to “visit a relative”, according to university authorities.
Police sources say he made a call from Delhi at around 1pm, and an hour-and-a-half later, another call from Jammu, so he could have travelled to Jammu by air.
However, Ehtisham’s father Bilal said this was unlikely, because he “only had Rs 400 in his pocket”.
“I had transferred Rs 5,000 in his account some days back, but he had left his ATM card with his cousin, who is also his roommate in the hostel. He had only taken about Rs 400, his Aadhaar card and college ID with him,” Bilal told ThePrint.
“He spoke to me at 10:30 in the morning and said he was going to Delhi, after which his phone went off. We don’t have any relative in Delhi, but it seems he went to see a friend. I then spoke to him at around 4:30 pm, when he said he was on his way to the metro station on his way back, and promised to send some pictures.”
Bilal also said he and his wife were about to visit Ehtisham in the Diwali holidays, so it would be pointless for his son to travel to Jammu. He said Ehtisham had been asking him to move to Delhi, saying the situation in Kashmir was bad and did not allow people to earn their livelihood. Bilal owns a shop in the valley.
Bilal, who was at the Srinagar airport trying to catch a flight to Delhi, said he was aware that the police was tracing his son’s cellphone.
“I will believe things only when I see my son,” he said.
Campus attack
On 2 October, local students and Afghans had been involved in a scuffle over social media posts inciting violence against the latter.
Two days later, a group assembled on campus and beat up the ‘Afghans’, including Ehtisham, at the behest of two Noida-based radicals Deepak Sharma and Ved Nagar, who have been booked by the police.
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“I had visited the campus in first week of this month after I got to know about the attack on him. He has a beard, so one fears things,” Bilal said.
“I stayed on campus till 10 October with him. The district magistrate from the area came up to me, asking if I would file an FIR against those who attacked him, but I refused. I said they are all like my sons.”