My 28-year-old brother Manikanth Kondaveeti left India on 26 April for a solo trip to Azerbaijan. We haven’t heard from him since the evening of 12 May. My parents and I are having sleepless nights, thinking about where and how he must be. Sign my petition asking the Government of India to intervene and expedite the search for my missing brother. 

In one of our last conversations, Manikath told us that he was going for a hike in the forests of Zaqatala in Azerbaijan. For the first 48 hours of him being unreachable we imagined all kinds of situations like he may have been on a trek and perhaps did not have mobile network. We were certain that he would call us the minute he reached his hotel. Things got extremely worrisome when our messages stopped getting delivered to his phone. We have not been able to track him since the morning of 13th May when he stayed overnight with a local in a hut. 

My brother had a flight for Uzbekistan on 17 May 2022, which he did not board and one of his bags is still at the hotel in Zaqatala where he was staying.

The office of the Indian Ambassador to Azerbaijan in Baku has informed us that they are trying to trace my brother with the help of local authorities and the police. But it has been two weeks since he has gone missing and I feel the investigation must now be expedited. 

My brother is an Indian who has gone missing in a foreign country and I request the government to help my family out. The locals are doing their best but I am sure we could be doing something from our country as well, in the form of technology such as drones or help with tracking his phone (so far we've tried several avenues to try to track his phone but we have not been able to get his exact coordinates). Getting his phone's coordinates would be of great help to the Azerbaijani people searching for him. Anything that can help fasten the pace of the search or help make the search easier would be extremely helpful.