28-year-old woman goes missing after she takes a shortcut to reach the Sinhagad fort during a trek organised by her company

Kavita Ishwar Chikile, a 28-year-old mechanical engineer, went missing from Sinhagad Fort, where she had gone on a trek organised by her company. Kavita, who was one of four girls in the 33-member Seko India Tools Company group, has not been seen since she took a short cut at 7.30 am to reach the top of the fort.

Top prize
According to her colleague, Meenakshi Gagare, who was part of the group, the company had announced that whoever reached the top of the fort first would be rewarded. She said, "We all started climbing. No one cared to see where others were headed. When I reached the top, I was the only girl. Later, another girl joined me and then yet another girl. But Kavita didn't come."

Worried colleagues learnt that Kavita had stopped for breath before she decided to take a shortcut to reach the top. "A colleague, Ujjwala Navgire, saw her last. Kavita told her that she was changing the route," said Gagare.

After she went missing, her colleagues searched for her till 4 pm and then lodged a complaint with the Haveli police station. "We have registered a missing complaint and a search party and mountaineers are looking for her," said an official at Haveli police station.

While Kavita lives in Kharadi, her family is in Satara. Her brother Chandrakant Chikile blamed Seko company officials for the incident. "They did notu00a0 bother to inform me until 5 pm. If they take employees on an outing, there should be proper arrangements. There should be someone leading from the front and keeping a tab at the back, which no one did," alleged Chikile.

Disappear
Meanwhile, mountaineers looking for Kavita are baffled with her disappearance. "This is the only instance that I know of where someone has gone missing from this spot. Hundreds of people pass through this trail to Sinhagad. Though there is a drop there of about 200 feet, we found no traces that suggest that she had a fall," said Shrikishna Patil, a mountaineer from a trekking company.