By IANS
Hyderabad : Hyderabad Police have formed three teams to trace an Indian American management professor who went missing on Oct 7 in the city and is suspected to have been kidnapped.
Feroze Syed, 38, remains untraced since he visited some jewellery shops here. He was carrying Rs.300,000 and a laptop.
Syed, who was working on management research in Pennsylvania, was staying alone at a hotel in Gowliguda area.
His wife Azra Syed, a software engineer, flew in here Friday while her brother Javed Khan also arrived here from Mumbai. A missing complaint was registered with Afzalgunj police station.
Azra had been trying to contact her husband over phone since Oct 7 but to no avail. She then decided to fly to India and was joined by other family members in India. They met Police Commissioner Balwinder Singh who assured them full cooperation in tracing Syed.
The police said they traced outgoing calls from Syed’s SIM card to Dharwad in Karnataka. However, this has not helped in tracing him. Anji, a tractor driver in Dharwad, found the SIM card lying on a seat in a Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KRTC) bus. This led police to suspect that Syed may have been kidnapped.
Police continue questioning Anji but have not found anything suspicious about him. He told police that he gave the SIM card to his brother-in-law who had a cell phone. They used the SIM card to make some calls.
Syed, a native of Pune, had come to India on a month-long visit to India. After visiting Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore, he arrived here on Oct 6 but went missing the next day. He planned to return to US in two days.
Police said he left the hotel around 11.30 a.m. on Oct 7 but did not return. He had reportedly hired an auto rickshaw go around the city. According to inspector P. Reshmaiah of the Afzalgunj police station, some people saw him in Golconda Fort area later that day.
The police teams are trying to trace him in the city, in surrounding districts and also in neighbouring Karnataka.
Azra, who is now staying in the same hotel where her husband was staying, said she was worried about his safety. “If somebody has kidnapped him, he should have contacted us. We are worried about his safety. He has no enemies and no disputes with anybody,” she said.