How Facebook Activity Helped UP Cops Trace Woman Presumed Dead 3 Years Ago

A 23-year-old married woman who had successfully led her parents to believe she was either dead or kidnapped for three years was tracked down in Lucknow through Facebook living with her lover, police said on Wednesday.

The revelation came last week when police found a Facebook account, which the woman, Kavita, had created under a false name, becoming active.

Kavita had married Vinay Kumar from Daduha Bazar on November 17, 2017.

On May 5, 2021, she went missing.

Her family accused her in-laws of murder, leading to the registration of a case against her husband, brother-in-law, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law at the Kotwali Nagar Police Station, Superintendent of Police Vineet Jaiswal said.

Despite extensive searches, Kavita's whereabouts remained unknown.

In December 2022, Vinay Kumar, the husband, filed a case against six people, including Kavita's brother Akhilesh, alleging that they had kidnapped his wife.

As her trail went cold, the high court demanded to know what had been doing, forcing them to revive their search.

Following the court's demand, the Special Operations Group and Kotwali police located Kavita at the house of her boyfriend, Satya Narayan Gupta, in the Daliganj area of Lucknow, Jaiswal said.

"Last week, there was an activity from the Facebook account of Kavita which had been created using a false name and identity. This activity was noted by the Cyber Cell here, which renewed its search to trace the woman, who was ultimately found living in Daliganj area of Lucknow," Jaiswal told PTI.

According to police, Gupta owned a shop in Gonda's Durjanpur market and Kavita frequently visited him. Their grew close and ran away.

During questioning, Kavita revealed that she lived with Gupta in Ayodhya for a year before moving to Lucknow.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)