Jyotirmaya Sharma in Hindustan Times:
I am sitting in the fashionable Azabu Juban area of Tokyo with a little lady, who speaks to me through an interpreter. Her eyes are vacant, perhaps searching for a sense of closure.
Her son, Kota Shinozaki, a 21-year-old Keio University student, from Saitama in Japan, arrived at the Delhi International Airport from Tokyo on September 3, 2006, at 2 am. On the same day, he purchased a package tour from a travel agent in New Delhi, which would take him to Jaipur and Agra by car, and eventually to Varanasi, Kolkata and, finally, back to Delhi by train. He left Delhi the same day for Jaipur, and reached Agra on September 5 from Jaipur with a driver named Raju.
The same afternoon, he checked into the Chanakya Hotel in Agra. He went to see the Taj Mahal with the driver and one Lalta Prasad Gautam, a Japanese-speaking guide introduced to him by the driver. The trio came back to the hotel around 5 pm. The next morning, when the driver came to the hotel to pick up Kota, there was no sign of him. His bed had not been slept in, and his belongings had disappeared. According to the hotel records, he had checked out. The driver did not report Kota’s disappearance to the police or the Japanese embassy.
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