On the evening of July 15, 2024, Ranjan Kumar (32) walked out of his home in Vikalp Khand, in Lucknow’s Gomti Nagar, but didn’t return. It was supposed to be a week of celebrations; Ranjan’s wedding was just days later. “The wedding events were underway. He left around 6.30 pm; we thought he had gone for a stroll,” his father, 68-year-old homoeopath Dr Vikrama Prasad, told The Indian Express.
When Ranjan did not return after two hours, panic set in, and the wedding was eventually cancelled.
What followed was a year-and-a-half-long struggle against a police system that eventually forced Prasad to knock on the doors of the Allahabad High Court after “seeing no ray of hope”.
His petition, filed by advocates Onkar Pandey and Anand Kumar Singh, has now snowballed, with the High Court inquiring into and criticising what it described as the Uttar Pradesh police’s “cavalier” approach toward missing persons.
In its order on January 29, a division bench stated that 1.08 lakh persons were reported missing across the state over two years, between 2024 and 2026, “but action for tracing only 9,700 persons had been taken”. “What could be the justification for this insufficiency in efforts to trace out the remaining missing persons?” it asked.
Ranjan Kumar (32) went missing on the evening of July 15, 2024
The court ordered that Dr Prasad’s petition be registered as a PIL, stating that a “larger public interest is now involved in the matter”.
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Fading hope
According to the missing person’s complaint filed at the Chinhat police station on July 17, 2024, Ranjan left home with no money. His bank accounts have shown no activity since, according to Prasad.
In his writ petition filed in November 2025, Prasad stated that despite repeated requests for over a year to the Station House Officer and Investigating Officer to “properly conduct the proceeding to search”, as well as writing to the Commissioner of Police about the inaction, he saw “no hope to get justice from the present police officials who are not taking the investigation seriously”.
“The police would tell me, ‘I am looking into it, I am doing this, I am doing that’,” Prasad recalled. “But I am not a lawyer or an investigator. I don’t know what they were actually doing. I just know I didn’t get any results.”
According to his petition, he was driven by “great apprehension… that the police will not do anything in the matter” to approach the High Court. He sought a writ of mandamus — a judicial command ordering the government to perform its public duty — to direct the police to investigate the case in a “fair and proper manner”.
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‘Casual and cavalier’
When the matter was heard by the Lucknow Bench of the High Court in December 2025, Justices Abdul Moin and Babita Rani observed that “this writ petition is a classic example of the casual and cavalier attitude of authorities”.
Investigation into Ranjan’s disappearance effectively began only after the court intervened — nearly 16 months later. An FIR was lodged on December 2, 2025, only after the court asked the Lucknow Police Commissioner for a status report.
However, what turned the plea into a state-wide issue was the government counsel’s admission before the High Court on December 17 that “complaints pertaining to missing… are uploaded (online), and thereafter, they continue to remain on the website till such time, some impetus is given either by an order of the Court of law or otherwise”.
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Noting that this “indicates the total lack of seriousness with which authorities take missing complaints… lodged by residents of Uttar Pradesh”, the court asked the state government’s principal home secretary to place on record data about police action in missing person complaints.
On seeing the data provided by the Police Technical Services Headquarters – 1,08,300 missing person complaints were registered from January 1, 2024, to January 18, 2026, of which 9,700 pertain to action taken to trace them – the court, on January 29, said it was shocking.
Stating that it was “aghast at the attitude of the authorities in addressing complaints pertaining to missing persons”, the court observed: “It is only when this court has taken cognisance of a person having gone missing that the official machinery has got into motion by lodging the FIR and by indicating efforts… now being made to trace the missing person.”
“The matter now concerns more than one person having gone missing; rather, it now concerns the entire State… the data itself indicates a prima facie lackadaisical attitude on the part of the authorities in tracing missing persons,” it said.
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“We are of the view that a larger public interest is now involved in the matter… we direct that the instant writ petition be… registered in the nature of a Public Interest Litigation… and listed before the appropriate court… on February 5, 2026,” the Bench directed.
Hearing the suo motu PIL on February 5, a coordinate bench of the HC issued directions to the state government seeking relevant data and said a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), if not already in place, must be framed to tackle such cases.
The division bench of Justices Rajan Roy and Abdhesh Kumar Chaudhary also issued directives to the Additional Chief Secretary (ACS), Home Department, and the Director General of Police (DGP) to join proceedings through video conferencing and assist the court in looking into the importance of the issue on the next date of hearing, March 23.
The ACS, Home, and DGP have been mentioned as opposite parties in the PIL.
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For Prasad, the developments bring little solace. “If my item is stolen, hearing that 10 other people were robbed doesn’t give me happiness,” Prasad said. “I am just a point in that data. I just want my son back.”
Ranjan Kumar (32) went missing on the evening of July 15, 2024