{"id":698595,"date":"2026-05-27T20:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T20:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/698595\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T20:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T20:58:10","slug":"fears-melbourne-man-who-disappeared-during-india-trip-may-have-met-with-foul-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/698595\/","title":{"rendered":"Fears Melbourne man who disappeared during India trip may have met with foul play"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Melbourne woman whose father has gone missing in India says she fears he could have met with foul play.<\/p>\n

Sunil Sharma, a 66-year-old Australian citizen, was visiting India to prepare an investment property for sale.<\/p>\n

His daughter, Surbhi Sharma, says her father is a high school maths teacher in Melbourne who has been preparing for retirement.<\/p>\n

She said she had been in touch with him during his trip, but had last heard from him on Friday.<\/p>\n

“I got a call Saturday morning [from my brother] saying, ‘Have you spoken to Dad?'” she said.<\/p>\n

“And I said, ‘No, I’ve not heard from him since yesterday morning.”’<\/p>\n

\"Sunil<\/p>\n

Sunil Sharma went missing on Friday while trying to sell a property in India. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Ms Sharma said her father had been at his property in Amritsar, in the state of Punjab, in India’s north-west, overseeing painters preparing it for sale.<\/p>\n

She said one of her father’s friends in India had raised the alarm with local authorities, who had been unable to locate Mr Sharma.<\/p>\n

“So my dad and my dad’s car are completely gone,” she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Sharma said local police were trying to reach her uncle, who was also seen at the property.<\/p>\n

She said he had also disappeared.<\/p>\n

“My dad’s brother \u2026 I believe is also someone the police are searching for at the moment because my dad’s brother was last seen in the house on Friday,” she said.<\/p>\n

Ms Sharma said she had been told local police also wanted to speak to a potential buyer who had been seen at the property.<\/p>\n

Family struggling with wait for answers<\/p>\n

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade confirmed it was providing consular assistance to the family of an Australian reported missing in India.<\/p>\n

Ms Sharma said she was receiving updates from the Australian Embassy in India and had been told that Interpol had been alerted.<\/p>\n

She and her brother have decided not to travel to India for now for safety reasons.<\/p>\n

“If there is something to do with \u2026 kidnapping or extortion or something like that, they said it’s not uncommon for family members also to be taken in,” she said.\"Sunil,<\/p>\n

Sunil Sharma with his daughter Surbhi and son Saransh. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Ms Sharma has barely slept since her father was reported missing and said the lack of information was frustrating.<\/p>\n

“I feel so helpless,” she said.<\/p>\n

“It’s just been really hard, and every day that goes by, it’s just really tough.<\/p>\n

“I just really hope that they’re just searching for him everywhere, and just my ideal scenario is just he’s well and being taken care of somewhere, and just hasn’t been able to make contact with us.<\/p>\n

“I can’t think of all the thousands of possibilities that there are in this situation.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Melbourne woman whose father has gone missing in India says she fears he could have met with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,340391,1209,129463,45318,32737,85,340390],"class_list":["post-698595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-diamond-valley-college-teacher-missing","tag-india","tag-interpol","tag-missing","tag-punjab","tag-sports","tag-sunil-sharma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}