Meet the retired cop who won’t stop finding missing persons

Though he retired in February 2025, Rajesh Pandey has reunited 25 missing people with their families since then

Mumbai: Rajesh Pandey, a 60-year-old retired Mumbai police constable, was enjoying a cup of tea with his wife on the afternoon of October 8 when his phone rang. On the other end was a distraught doctor from Satara, Rajendra Mane, who told Pandey that his 22-year-old nephew, Dhanraj, had been missing since August 9.

Rajesh Pandey (left) with the family of a 4-year-old girl (in black, seated on her mother’s lap) who had gone missing from CSMT. Pandey tracked her down to a children’s home in Varanasi.

Pandey put down his cup and asked Mane to send him everything he knew about Dhanraj: his photograph, height, weight, clothes he was last seen wearing, medical details, interests and habits. Within minutes, he had circulated the information across nearly 1,000 WhatsApp groups related to finding missing persons. These groups comprise police officers, NGOs and other organisations, and civil society members from across the country.

Three days later, Pandey received a call from the Bengaluru police informing him that Dhanraj had been spotted in the city. The same day, he boarded a train to Bengaluru with Mane. However, upon reaching the city, they learned that Dhanraj had later been spotted in Pondicherry. Undeterred, Pandey set off again the following day.

The search continues, but Pandey is no stranger to such pursuits. Though he retired in February 2025, he has reunited 25 missing people with their families since then. He has taken neither a family vacation nor a day off during this period.

“I get immense satisfaction when I see someone smile after reuniting with a lost loved one. That alone is my fee,” said Pandey, who lives in a 160-sq-ft home in the Naigaon police quarters in Dadar with his wife and two sons. Retirement has allowed him to devote himself entirely to tracing missing people, particularly children. “I travel at my expense to follow a lead or tag along with the police team when I get a tip-off,” he said.

During his 32 years in uniform, Pandey helped solve nearly 3,000 missing-person cases. His methods have even acquired a name within the Mumbai police: the “Pandey Module”. For harrowed families desperately searching for loved ones, he remains the go-to man. His tenacity and skill in reuniting missing persons with their families remain unmatched, his former colleagues say.

For Pandey, this remains his mission, which he now pursues without his khaki uniform and the moustache that once complemented it.

Operation Muskaan

Pandey joined the Mumbai police in 1992 after his father’s death, hoping to support his four younger sisters. In 2011, while posted at Santacruz police station, he helped a woman trace her kidnapped child to her estranged husband. The experience, he said, sparked his passion for finding missing people.

Since then, he has left no stone unturned and has not left any missing-person case pending throughout his career. Taking note of his commitment and style, in 2016, then Mumbai police commissioner Datta Padsalgikar launched Operation Muskan, an initiative to trace and rescue missing and trafficked children. According to Padsalgikar, the initiative, with Pandey’s help, traced 2,165 of 2,182 missing minors in 2025.

Pandey has also been invited by various commissionerates to share his expertise—the Pandey Module—with young officers.

“He is committed, and his experience helps and guides us,” said Rakesh Kalasagar, commissioner of Government Railway Police (GRP) Mumbai. “Six months ago, I had invited Pandey to share his experience and method of tracing missing people with my subordinates and new recruits to understand how to go about sensitive cases of missing children. His network across the country has helped us a lot.”

Police commissionerates in Thane and Mira-Bhayander-Vasai-Virar, along with the Palghar district administration, have also sought his guidance.

The Pandey Module

At the heart of Pandey’s approach is an extensive network of unlikely informants: tailors, cleaning staff at guest houses and hotels, bar employees, ashram workers and NGO volunteers. He doesn’t just rely on technology; he has a proven method that delivers results.

“I find out every little detail about the missing person, along with his interests or even things that might seem unimportant to the family, like their hobbies, which might give me a lead,” he said.

In April this year, Nitin Cheda, a 22-year-old businessman from Lokhandwala in Andheri West, disappeared after suffering heavy business losses. When the police search, which spanned several days, hit a dead end, Cheda’s brother contacted Pandey.

Examining Cheda’s call records, Pandey noticed calls to a business directory service. He visited its Malad office and discovered that Cheda had enquired about “cheap hotels” in Panaji, Goa, hours before disappearing.

Pandey travelled to Goa, rented a two-wheeler and spent three days searching with local police before spotting Cheda at Baga beach. He summoned Cheda’s brother to Goa, counselled the young man about repaying his loans, and urged him to return to his family.

Another case took him to Varanasi.

In June 2025, Pandey received a call from a desperate mother who had been looking for her four-year-old daughter since the child went missing from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus (CSMT), one of India’s busiest railway stations, on May 20. He scanned through hours of CCTV footage and spotted a man walking with the child before they disappeared into the crowd.

The trail eventually led Pandey to Varanasi, where a journalist told him about a girl speaking in Marathi at a Child Welfare Committee (CWC) centre. The child was reunited with her family. Pandey later learnt that the alerts he had circulated had apparently prompted the abductor to abandon her at Varanasi station, where she was rescued.

Pandey’s phone is now crowded with two kinds of messages: photos of missing people from various WhatsApp groups, and messages from people thanking him for finding a lost loved one.

His resolve remains steadfast, and his retirement has changed little. “I will continue this quest till my last breath,” he said.