'Missing' Noida fashion designer traced to Gurgaon

Four days after she went missing from Delhi under mysterious circumstances, a Noida-based fashion designer has been traced to a village near here even as police probed various angles including whether she staged her own kidnapping or left home due to family rift. Shipra Malik, 29, was reported by police to be safe.

A Noida police team found Shipra at a house in Sultanpur village, around 30 km from Gurgaon, near a bird sanctuary, late last night. She had gone missing on Monday afternoon shortly after she dialled Delhi Police helpline number from near Lajpat Nagar.

According to Laxmi Singh, DIG, Meerut, who is heading investigations in the case, "Shipra was unhappy and disturbed due to heavy loans, debt and property disputes between her husband and father in-law... In the last four days, she stayed at an ashram in Jaipur... After she mysteriously left Noida, she took a bus to Dhaula Kuan from where she boarded another bus to Jaipur."

Singh said, "Her last location was traced yesterday night to a house in Sultanpur Village on Jhajjar road near Sultanpur bird sanctuary. She called up her husband Chetan Malik who in turn informed Noida police." She has been taken to Noida.

"Police are trying to verify the sequence of her locations and statements. There are no visible injury marks on her body," the police officer said, ruling out that she had been kidnapped. "While going to Jaipur, she reached near Lajpat Nagar... She also tried to dial 100 –- Delhi Police control room -- to circulate the message that she was going on her own but, in the meantime, her phone got switched off due to non-availability of battery," Singh said.

On Monday, she had left her home in Sector 37 Noida for Chandni Chowk in Delhi and had been untraceable since then. Singh said Shipra scripted her own kidnapping story drawing inspiration from TV show 'Crime Petrol' and the recent case of abduction of 25-year-old Snapdeal employee Deepti Sarna from Ghaziabad.

While Noida Police claimed that Shipra called her husband from Sultanpur, Gurgaon Police had a different version. According to Gurgaon Police, "Malik knocked the door of a house in Sultanpur around 11 pm and said she was abducted by three to four unidentified persons in a Maruti van and was later dumped near the village. She sought help from villagers who informed Gurgaon Police control room."

"A team of Gurgaon Police went to the spot. After interrogating her, they informed Noida Police," said Hawa Singh, APRO, Gurgaon police. Shipra told police that she was in "deep trauma" over the financial condition of her family as income of her husband, a local builder, went down in the past few years.

"Her boutique in Chandni Chowk was also not doing well and she was depressed. She had regular tiff with her husband over repayment of Rs 75 lakh loan. So she decided to stay in a peaceful ambience for some days," Meerut DIG Singh said.

Malik was a graduate in fashion designing and married in 2010. Last month, 25-year-old Snapdeal employee Sarna went missing after taking an autorickshaw from the metro station in Vaishali area in Ghaziabad. She returned home after 40 hours, saying her abductors had released her without harming her.