After 6 Days of Desperate Search, Body of Missing Tripura Girl Sneha Debnath Found in Yamuna. Why Did It Take 2 Days to File an FIR?

A week-long search for 19-year-old Sneha Debnath ended in tragedy on Sunday as her body was pulled from the Yamuna River near Geeta Colony. Sneha Debnath, a second-year B.Sc Mathematics student at Delhi University’s Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College was missing since July 7.

Sneha, originally from Sabroom in Tripura, had come to Delhi to pursue her education and was living in the Paryavaran Complex in South Delhi. The case drew widespread attention, prompting even the Tripura Chief Minister to step in and order urgent police action.

Sneha Debnath was earlier living in the Army students hostel in Delhi but she recently shifted with family as they came to Delhi for the treatment of her father, who is a retired Indian Army officer.

What Happened On July 7?

On the morning of July 7, Sneha reportedly told her mother she was going to drop her friend Pitunia at Sarai Rohilla Railway Station for an early morning train. At around 5:15 AM, she left her home in the Paryavaran Complex, South Delhi, in a cab.

By 8:45 AM, her phone was unreachable. Her family then reached out to Pitunia and found out that the two had never met that morning. When the cab driver was contacted, he confirmed dropping Sneha off at Signature Bridge in Wazirabad.

Sneha’s family later found a handwritten suicide note from her room. The note spoke about ‘failure and burden’ and the note is now being treated as part of the official investigation.

No CCTV, No Clues

The area near Signature Bridge reportedly has poor surveillance infrastructure. There are no functional CCTV cameras on the stretch where Sneha was dropped. While some eyewitnesses later told police they saw a girl standing alone on the bridge, the absence of footage left investigators with few concrete leads.

A missing person’s complaint was filed, and an intensive search operation was launched by Delhi Police with the help of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF). The rescue teams scoured a 7-kilometre stretch of the Yamuna, from Nigam Bodh Ghat to Noida.

On July 13, her body was finally discovered under the Geeta Colony flyover and later identified by the police.

No FIR for 48 Hours, No Police Contact for 17 Hours

The family of Sneha Debnath alleged that despite repeated attempts, no police action was documented for over 17 hours after Sneha was reported missing. The FIR was eventually registered only on the morning of July 9, following immense pressure from the family. The two-day delay in filing the FIR has raised concerns about lapses at Mehrauli Police Station.

Sneha’s sister, Bipasha, has also alleged that a senior police official, an ACP, misbehaved with her when she pressed for timely intervention.

Sneha Debnath also reportedly left behind a suicide note before heading to Delhi’s Signature Bridge. In the note, Sneha expressed deep emotional distress, saying she felt like a failure and a burden, and that the weight of her struggles had become unbearable. She made it clear that no one else was to blame for her decision, stating unequivocally that there was no foul play involved and the choice was hers alone. 

“It was my decision fully conscious under no influence,” she wrote in the alleged suicide note.

Missing Surveillance at Signature Bridge Raises Alarms

One of the most glaring failures in the case surfaced with reports regarding the absence of any functional CCTV coverage at Signature Bridge and surrounding areas. This left the police officials with no visual trail of Sneha Debnath after she exited the cab. Lack of surveillance footage proved to be a critical gap in the investigation.