The search ended where it had begun — in the city of marble and myths, along the Yamuna, in the tangled forests near the Taj Mahal. After three months, a small fortune in reward money, scores of CCTV cameras, drone surveillance, and a trail of dead-end leads, Greyhound, a ten-year-old Indian breed dog, was found on Saturday evening, three months after she vanished from an Agra hotel, lost in the city’s sprawl. The disappearance was ordinary, the way disasters usually begin. On the morning of Nov 3, Dipayan Ghosh and Kasturi Patra — both originally from Delhi, now living in Gurgaon—checked into a hotel in Agra with their two dogs, Woof and Greyhound, on the long Diwali weekend. They were sightseeing in Fatehpur Sikri when the hotel called. Greyhound had slipped her leash. The gate was open.118319006The last confirmed sighting had been on Nov 5, near the Taj Mahal metro station — a flicker of movement caught on security footage. A few people saw her. Some said she had made it to Shahjahan Garden. None of it led anywhere.
The couple filed a case against the hotel, citing negligence, and got the police involved. But the search had always belonged to Dipayan and Kasturi. They stayed in Agra for two weeks, going door to door like desperate detectives. They offered Rs 30,000, then upped it to Rs 50,000. They returned to Gurgaon, but Agra called them back, again and again. Their car became a second home, their maps covered with red circles: Shahjahan Garden, the ghats, the market roads. At night, they lay awake in hotels, replaying every lead. For three months, the search consumed them — Dipayan carved out days from his job at Tata Group, while Kasturi, an entrepreneur, set her work aside, their only project now was the dog they refused to lose. The search turned into something between a crime investigation and an odyssey. They learned to track the city’s rhythms: which alleys held stray dogs, which shopkeepers might have seen something.
There were reward posters pasted across the city, flyers handed out at street corners, stakeouts at dingy metro stations, generous tips to chai vendors for clues, and desperate posts on social media pleading for pointers. They rewound grainy CCTV footage for hours. Drones combed Agra’s labyrinthine alleys. Police sniffer dogs were deployed. Tips came, most false.
Anu Pandey