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It was around midnight. A Kerala Police team stopped its vehicle on a deserted road in Odisha’s Ganjam district. Beyond them lay a forested stretch with just a handful of houses.

Local police had warned them to be cautious as Maoist activity had been reported there in the past.

The team had travelled nearly 2,000km from Kerala to find a 13-year-old girl who had gone missing from Kuruppampady in Ernakulam.

The girl, the daughter of an Odisha migrant couple, disappeared from her home on August 13. Her parents approached the Kuruppampady police station.

A team led by Sub-Inspector Abi K M, who was in charge of the station, began checking the areas around Methala, where the family lived.
Officers also examined footage from nearly 100 CCTV cameras in the locality. It was not of much help.

The breakthrough came from an unexpected lead. While examining the girl’s mother’s mobile phone, police found that she had received a call from Salem. The call details had been deleted, but investigators managed to recover the number with technical assistance.

The number led them to a man named Keshav, who was working in Salem.
On questioning, he revealed that the girl had been in contact with an Odisha native employed at a company there.

Soon, the police team travelled to Salem, but the trail went cold. The young man’s phone had been switched off.

“We initially thought the girl might be in Salem, so we packed just one pair of clothes and set out,” Abi recalls. “We kept following every lead we received. That’s when we learnt that she had walked about 6km from her house, then taken a bus to Thrissur, and taken a train from there to Odisha.”

With instructions from Ernakulam Rural SP K S Sudarshan, the team then set out for Odisha in a private vehicle.

Abi was joined by Senior Civil Police Officers N P Bindhu, Arun Karunan and Rejith Ram.