A 27-year-old woman from central India’s Madhya Pradesh, who works as a lawyer and was preparing to become a civil judge, planned a detailed escape to Nepal to avoid pressure from her family to get married. Archana Tiwari went missing after boarding a train on August 7, and after 13 days of intense searching, she was finally traced to Kathmandu, reports said,
Archana had boarded the Indore–Katni Narmada Express but got off at Itarsi with the help of a friend. Her bag was later found in the train’s B3 coach, which led her family to file a missing person complaint with the Government Railway Police (GRP) in Katni on August 8, a day after Rakshabandhan, a Hindu festival.
What followed was a large-scale search involving police teams, the GRP, the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), and divers. Over 500 CCTV cameras were checked. Forest areas between Barkheda and Budni were searched, and divers looked through a 32-km stretch of the Narmada river.
Police finally made progress by checking Archana’s phone records. One name stood out — Saransh Jokchand. Investigators found that Saransh had travelled with Archana on the same train and had brought clothes for her. She used those to change her appearance before getting into a taxi arranged in advance.
Her route to Nepal was not direct. She travelled through Shujalpur, Indore, Hyderabad, Jodhpur, and Delhi before finally crossing the India-Nepal border from Uttar Pradesh.
Another person, Tejinder Singh, also helped her. He knew which parts of the railway station had no CCTV coverage and helped her avoid being seen. Archana had stopped using her phones before disappearing. She gave one phone to Tejinder, asking him to switch it on near Midghat and then throw it away to confuse investigators.
According to police, Archana may have used her legal knowledge to plan the escape, knowing that a missing person case filed with the railway police usually doesn’t get top priority. But she may not have expected the case to get so much attention from the media and authorities.
Investigators found that Archana had rejected at least five marriage proposals recently. Her family’s decision to arrange a marriage with a revenue officer was likely the final trigger for her escape. Eventually, Nepal authorities confirmed that an Indian woman living quietly in Kathmandu matched Archana’s description.
Her story has gone viral and drawn attention to the pressure many young women face to get married. Archana’s carefully planned disappearance shows just how far someone might go to find freedom on their own terms.
