Two doctors go missing, no clue even after 5 days

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 30

Doctors’ associations across India are working together to solve the curious case of disappearance of two medics from New Delhi on Christmas day. Dr Dileep Satya, a former resident at the PGI, Chandigarh, and Dr Himabindu Saginathan, an ex-AIIMS New Delhi resident doctor, were last seen together in Delhi’s upmarket Hauz Khas area on December 25.

They have since been untraceable and their mobile phones are switched off.

The families of both doctors have registered FIRs for missing persons and the police have formed many crack teams, including an anti-human trafficking squad, to find the missing doctors. Their families are meanwhile distraught.

The Tribune has learnt that Satya had secured All India Rank 4 in the Doctorate of Medicine (DM) exam held recently and had gone to Puducherry on December 19 to appear for an interview at JIPMER.

Until two months ago Satya, 29, was working as a resident doctor at the paediatrics department of the PGI, Chandigarh. He resigned recently to prepare for the DM exam.

Enquiries revealed that Satya, Hima and Hima’s husband Shridhar are thick friends from the days of Kurnool Medical College, Andhra Pradesh, where they studied medicine together.

Shridhar said, “We are all very close. Himabindu, Satya and I go back a long way. We are close knit like family.”

Shridhar, a resident doctor at AIIMS paediatrics department, says he last spoke to his wife at 11.30 am on December 25.

“Hima told me she would accompany Satya to the church from where Satya would go to the railway station,” Shridhar adds.

But when he called his wife at 2.30 pm, her cell phone was switched off, so was Satya’s. While Shridhar got married to Hima in August this year, Satya married last year in July. His wife, who lives in Chandigarh, has been appealing for help on Twitter, and messages have gone viral.

Back in Delhi, though the police are learnt to have spotted the missing duo on CCTV cameras in Gautam Nagar where Shridhar lives on X-mas day, they were not spotted later at any church.

The AIIMS Resident Doctors’ Association has written to the Union Home Secretary, urging him to issue directions to trace the doctors.