Juhi Tyagi, a young research fellow at New York's Stony Brook University, who had been allegedly reported “missing” in Bihar's Nawada district since Monday, categorically dismissed suggestions of “abduction.”
Local sources said Ms. Tyagi, who hails from Bangalore, returned along with her aide and facilitator Pradip Kumar Das to Mahulia Tar village on Thursday afternoon.
Ms. Tyagi, along with Mr. Das, was allegedly said to be missing from the Kawakol block when she did not return to Mahulia Tar by Monday night.
An English news channel reported Ms. Tyagi clarifying that she was merely visiting villages in and around the area as part of her research work and that any suggestion of her being abducted by Naxals was utterly false.
“There was no case of abduction whatsoever as no complaint was filed by friends or relatives [of Juhi or Pradip] either in Jamui or in Nawada's Khaira police station. But we were on an intelligence alert in case any information regarding them surfaced,” Jamui SP Raj Narain Singh told The Hindu .
According to local sources in Jamui, the scare apparently began after Juhi and Das did not return to the village by Monday night, leading to speculation of abduction in the extremist-plagued belt.
They said this was Ms. Tyagi's third visit to the Jamui-Nawada belt, where she had been researching on local issues in a Dalit hamlet since the last 20 days.
