29-year-old lawyer Archana Tiwari staged her own disappearance to escape family pressure for marriage and follow her dream of becoming a judge. Police traced her from Madhya Pradesh to Kathmandu after a two-week mystery.
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BHOPAL: When police officers finally solved the case of missing lawyer Archana Tiwari, what they discovered shocked everyone. It was not a crime, but a planned disappearance by Archana herself.
“She wanted to become a judge, and her family wanted her to leave her studies, her ambitions, and marry a revenue officer. She planned to run away and start a new life, pursue her dreams,” said GRP Superintendent Rahul Kumar Lodha, who led one of the biggest police operations in Madhya Pradesh in recent years and finally traced her to Kathmandu. After that, she returned to Bhopal by flight.
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For almost two weeks in August, the 29-year-old lawyer had turned the state’s railway tracks, forests, and highways into the stage of her escape plan. Her last phone call was at 10:16 pm on August 5, when she told her aunt she was near Bhopal.
The next morning, her family waited for her at Katni South railway station as the Narmada Express arrived. But Archana never stepped out. Later, her bag full of rakhis and festival gifts was found abandoned.
She had not vanished by accident. Instead, she quietly escaped with two men — a 24-year-old Indore youth she met on New Year’s Eve, and his driver. Together, they allegedly planned her disappearance very carefully.
Archana was already living independently in Indore, practising at the High Court while also preparing for civil judge exams. She had earlier worked in Jabalpur and Indore, and her professional ambitions often clashed with her family’s wishes.
“At home, her family had different plans. They wanted her to get married. They sent her three or four proposals, all of which she refused. When they fixed her match with a patwari, there was a big fight. The family asked her to give up her studies. She was in no mood to do that,” Lodha said.
Around this time, she met the 24-year-old youth who dreamed of starting a drone company. “She told us during questioning that she trusted him,” Lodha said.
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In early August, after attending a case in Harda, Archana started working on her plan. At that time, her family gave her an ultimatum to marry a revenue officer.
“She had a clear idea of how police investigations work,” Lodha said. “She thought that if she vanished on a train, it would be the GRP’s responsibility. She believed we wouldn’t be able to trace her. She thought she could change her identity, live elsewhere, and return one day.”
The driver suggested Itarsi as the escape point. “It was a junction with limited CCTV coverage,” Lodha said. “Archana agreed. They even discussed how to dispose of her phone and watch so no trace remained.”
On August 5, she boarded the Narmada Express like everything was normal.
“At Narmadapuram, her friend was waiting in an SUV with a fresh set of clothes,” Lodha said. “She handed over her phone and smartwatch to the driver, who threw them away in the forests near Midghat. That’s where we spent days searching, believing she might have fallen or been harmed.”
Her abandoned bag with rakhis was part of her strategy. “She wanted us to think she had fallen off the train or met with an accident,” Lodha said. “It was an intentional ploy.”
From Itarsi, Archana and her friend travelled through backroads to Shujalpur, carefully avoiding toll booths and CCTV cameras. “They thought the missing persons report would eventually die down,” Lodha said. “But the media picked up the case, and it became a big issue. That’s when they panicked.”
Under growing pressure, Archana and her friend decided to leave Madhya Pradesh.
“They thought of Hyderabad first, because it’s a city where Hindi is not widely spoken, so they could blend in,” Lodha said. “But with relentless coverage, they abandoned that plan and decided to leave India.”
Their journey went from Burhanpur to Jodhpur, then Delhi, and finally, Archana boarded a flight to Kathmandu. Her friend stayed behind, keeping his phone on flight mode while using his father’s SIM card to fake his location in Indore.
“She thought she had beaten us,” Lodha said. “But then the driver was picked up by the Delhi Police in an unrelated cheating case. That was the turning point. Then we questioned her friend, and the whole plan came out.”
With her friend caught, the police finally reached Archana. “We reached her through his phone. She agreed to come back. She flew from Kathmandu to Delhi, and then to Bhopal,” Lodha said.
At present, no criminal charges have been filed against Archana, but the police are still seeking legal advice. “We are considering how to proceed. Technically, she staged her own disappearance,” Lodha said.
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