This Article is From Jan 10, 2013

Hopefully, he is alive, says father of missing teen from Bangalore

Manchester: The father of an Indian student who went missing on New Year's eve from a nightclub in Manchester appealed to the governments in the UK, India and people to come forward and help him find his son.

19-year-old Souvik Pal from Bangalore, a student of Manchester Metropolitan University, was asked to leave a nightclub - The Warehouse Project - where he was partying with his friends.

He was last seen on CCTV leaving the club at Old Trafford at about 11 pm on December 31. His friends reported his absence to the police who in turn contacted his father.

Souvik's father Satanu Pal, who flew in Manchester from Bangalore, has decided to stay in Manchester to assist the police with their investigations.

He told NDTV, "Hopefully my son is alive. And if he is alive there are two possibilities. One is that he is hiding or he is forced by someone else."

Mr Pal said that his wife and he were worried about their son and recalled the last conversation he had with him on New Year's eve. "As parents we ask him if he was having good food and taking care of his health. He was excited he was going a party."

The police are trying to reconstruct what exactly happened that night.

Detective Chief Inspector Colin Larkin said, "He was asked to leave the premises by a door supervisor. He indicated that he wanted to go to the ladies toilet and the door staff said he can't. He was asked to leave the premises."

It is not clear if this was a misunderstanding. After this incident, he was last seen outside the nightclub.

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Souvik's father is hoping for help from the Indian High commission in the UK. He said, "I am looking for more (help) obviously. I am looking for more help from everybody. The kind of support they have given, I do not know whether they have some more capacity to support at this moment. But the greatest support I can get is from Greater Manchester Police - because they are the direct agency who can search my son. Government can only request them to expedite it. That is my understanding."

A massive hunt launched by the Manchester police in the canals and rivers has so far not yielded any clues.
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