Tucked away in a corner of a Marathi daily in Sangli on Wednesday was an odd notice: the state sales tax department directing one of its rogue officers to appear before it within 10 days or face disciplinary action. The move was prompted by sales tax inspector Pallavi Ramchandra Mane-Patil’s absence from work for over four months.

The Class I officer who was deputed to Sangli — her first posting as a sales tax inspector — on August 25, 2011 has been ‘missing’ since her last working day on November 12 last year. But her father, Ramchandra, filed a missing person complaint at the Aashta police station in Sangli only a month later. Since going AWOL, Pallavi severed ties with all her contacts. According to Aashta police inspector Pratap Poman, she was last seen in Ahmednagar and Bangalore.