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Saima Ahmed: Mystery Disappearance & Death (Edinburgh; 2015 / 2016)

Well, OK ... If I have to make the effort to look into it ...

Once Ms. Ahmed's remains were identified the authorities steadfastly declined to release any information on the state in which they were found. This appears to be the primary reason this incident's description seems so vague even after all these years. However ...

I've located what seems to be the earliest / original newspaper account of her remains' discovery in January 2016. It's an Edinburgh Evening News article from 15 January 2016. This article is no longer accessible at the newspaper's website, but it can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/2016011...ount-house-on-edinburgh-s-outskirts-1-4001227

Here are some relevant excerpts ...

Skull found at Gogar Mount House on Edinburgh’s outskirts

... The remains - reportedly a woman’s skull - were found off Gogarstone Road in Edinburgh.

Several holes of Gogarburn Golf Club were shut as teams searched the area following Saturday’s discovery.

The property in question is the 19th century manor Gogar Mount House, according to the Daily Record.

A Police Scotland spokesman said: “Officers were called to Gogarstone Road at around 4pm on Saturday following the discovery of human remains within the grounds of a property.

“A detailed forensic examination is now under way to establish the full circumstances surrounding this, and further updates will be provided when available.

Golf club secretary Kenneth Brown told the Record: “The police expanded the search on to the golf course on Monday.

“We’ve got scrubland between the ninth fairway and the estate boundary.

“We’ve closed the seventh, eighth and ninth holes while they’re here.

It is not known how long the remains had been on the property before they were uncovered.

A white forensic tent has been erected beside a cluster of trees near the ninth hole of the golf course.

The tent – which can be seen from the pavement of the A8 Glasgow Road – was today being guarded by two police officers.

These facroids pretty clearly indicate Ms. Ahmed's corpse was severely decomposed by the time it was found.
 
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A white forensic tent has been erected beside a cluster of trees near the ninth hole of the golf course.

To illustrate the scene, here's a photo that appeared in a January 2018 news article concerning disciplinary action against two police officers involved in the initial investigation. The photo apparently shows the forensic tent erected during the search for, and collection of, Ms. Ahmed's remains.

Police@AhmedScene.jpg

SOURCE: https://www.heraldscotland.com/news...rian-saima-ahmeds-mysterious-death-edinburgh/
 
This 26 February 2016 news article in the Edinburgh Evening News:

https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman....ght-after-edinburgh-remains-identified-625244

... was published the day following authorities' announcement of the remains' identification. It marked the first public appeal for information about Ms. Ahmed's visit to Edinburgh. It also included the following factoids and contextual tidbits ...
The grisly find, which was unearthed in a patch of woodland between the grounds of the £4 million Gogar Mount House and Gogarburn Golf Club, has stumped detectives and her family. Now officers are appealing ... to establish how she found herself in Gogar, close to the A8 Glasgow Road.

Last month’s grim discovery sparked a major police operation as detectives used forensic techniques and DNA analysis to trace the identity of the body, with the search spilling over on to Gogarburn Golf Club.

One implication of the search spanning two properties (the house / estate and the golf course) is that the apparently skeletal remains were scattered. This impression is amplified by the following passages ...
... A former top murder squad detective told the News that human remains left out in the open could deteriorate into a “semi-skeletal” state within a matter of weeks.

He said the warm, humid weather over September and October last year – combined with the fact the body was found in woodland – would have quickened the process of decay, making officers’ jobs “much, much harder”.

And he revealed the “scattering” of bodies by foxes and other animals was another “very common” obstacle detectives would be up against. ...

The following bits mention things I'd not see before. Ms. Ahmed was a divorcee, she was supposed to have been working the day she disappeared but didn't show up at her workplace, she was carrying money she'd withdrawn from an ATM, and this money and her handbag were found in the area of her remains' discovery.
... Saima ... is believed to have travelled up to Edinburgh by train on Sunday, August 30.

The divorcee, who lives with her mother, father and brother, had been expected at Brent Civic Centre – where she was working part-time as a librarian – but failed to turn up.

Instead, carrying only a small handbag, she left her Oakington Manor Drive home at 8.30am and walked to Wembley’s High Road, where she was captured on CCTV at 9.57am.

Here, she withdrew on undisclosed sum of money at an ATM outside Natwest Bank. Her remains would later be found with her handbag and cash nearby. ...

Regarding her travel to Edinburgh:
At 10.08am, she was snapped on CCTV entering Wembley Central Railway Station, and just ten minutes later had boarded a London Overground service bound for Watford Junction. Officers believe she got off the train at Watford Junction and boarded a service to Northampton at 11.06am, though they stress this is not confirmed. Her exact route up to Edinburgh after this point remains unknown, but detectives think she travelled to Hemel Hempstead, Birmingham and then on to the Capital. ...

In piecing together her movements, detectives said the “passage of time” had been their biggest stumbling block.
It is believed CCTV footage from Edinburgh Waverley – which could have proved vital in confirming Saima’s arrival in the Capital – has been deleted. A spokesman for the station declined to confirm how long footage was usually kept. ...

And finally ...
But they declined to go into details over the condition her body was found in. ...

FULL STORY: https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman....ght-after-edinburgh-remains-identified-625244
 
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I notice that the photo of her at the station shows her wearing trousers and with her hair uncovered but there is another photo with quite a severe hijab. It may not be relevant but it might indicate some sort of cultural disagreement with her family that would cause her to take off. How awful that it turned out to be to her death.
 
Some miscellaneous comments based on the additional tidbits I found ...

I noticed that no one missed an opportunity to state Ms. Ahmed was living with her "tight-knit" and "loving" family. These ubiquitous allusions to a stable home life were numerous enough to make my antennae quiver, because they implied the family / residential setting was something someone considered a possible issue.

It's apparently the case that no one can prove she arrived in Edinburgh by rail, nor that she continued to travel by rail any farther than Watford Junction. I haven't seen any mention of tickets being found in her handbag as evidence for her travel. The lack of evidence for her arrival in Edinburgh was explained by surveillance video footage having been deleted. It seems to me one can't rule out the possibility she traveled only part-way to Edinburgh by train.

Furthermore, it strikes me this ambiguity opens up the possibility she hadn't originally intended to travel all the way to Edinburgh, and this eventual destination resulted from something that happened earlier and closer to home. Who travels all that distance, entailing at least one overnight stay, carrying only a handbag?

The later / recycled accounts emphasize the golf course as the site where her remains were found. This is misleading. The earliest accounts state her remains were (if only partially) discovered on the grounds of the Gogar Mount House*, and that the ensuring search extended to nearby areas of the adjacent golf course. Tree belts separate the Mount House and golf course grounds.

[*] A detailed overview of this property can be accessed at:
https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/23027/gogar-mount

Perhaps most importantly ... Ms. Ahmed took off when she was expected to be going to her workplace. This implies intent to travel secretly. Whether the intent was to be gone a day, a week or forever is the big question.
 
...It's apparently the case that no one can prove she arrived in Edinburgh by rail, nor that she continued to travel by rail any farther than Watford Junction. I haven't seen any mention of tickets being found in her handbag as evidence for her travel. The lack of evidence for her arrival in Edinburgh was explained by surveillance video footage having been deleted. It seems to me one can't rule out the possibility she traveled only part-way to Edinburgh by train...

Possible apologies in advance - I am not overly convinced of the infallibility of my memory and my recall may well be off, but I’ve been reading the latest reports of this case with a frown of confusion, because I think an important narrative shift could possibly have taken place in its retelling.

I was working in Edinburgh when the remains were discovered at Gogarburn, and read the stories in the Scottish paper press at the time that details of the discovery were released to the media.

My understanding then was that the details of Saima Ahmed’s journey were previously unknown, and only effectively reverse engineered by the police after the body was found. Back in the August of 2015, beyond knowing that she had got on a train at Wembley station, no-one actually had a clue where Saima Ahmed had travelled to.

However, the implication in the wording of current reporting appears to suggest that the general destination was known at the time of the disappearance (rather than discovered several months later). If my memory is in fact correct, then subsequent reporting has effectively, if unintentionally, spun this reverse engineering back around to create an assumption that the destination was known all along - and it may be evidence of the speculative nature of this process that different media sources suggest different stations for the changes in her journey (Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Birmingham and Wigan are all mentioned, but none with absolute certainty). And, it’s worth pointing out that none of the reports – at least not one I can find - precisely fix the knowledge of Miss Ahmed’s destination at the time of her disappearance with an actual statement, either by police or family.

If this is right, then the overriding reason that Saima Ahmed hasn't been spotted on CCTV is because by the time anyone knew that she’d travelled to Edinburgh it was nearly five months after the fact, and likely that all of the CCTV of any use would have been wiped (I don't think there is any specific regulation regarding the retention of CCTV data in the UK – but 30 days seems to be standard hold time).

Also. The unconfirmed sightings at Portobello – although not established as absolute fact, are often repeated as such. I’d be a little circumspect in regard to such testimony even if it was close to the initial event – but if it only came to light four months later, then I'd have an even harder time taking it at face value. Again, I’ve not found it possible to precisely place the timing of this testimony – which is frustrating, as it might help prove or disprove the initial point.

I spent ages trying to find some clarity on this, but information on the precise details of the case is actually pretty sparse and very repetitive – and the news stories from the times of both the disappearance and the discovery have been subsumed within their own updates over the years. Most articles now state that Saima Ahmed was last seen on CCTV at Wembley, heading for Edinburgh via (insert choice of intermediate station) – I am convinced the second element, although essential to understanding how the story actually developed in real time, is a backdated fact, rather than one which was known at the time of her reported disappearance; the compression of a fact known at the time with another fact which was not.

If I’m right, then it’s an illustration of how a very simple shift in narrative can have a disastrous effect on future understanding – and if it can happen in a case with a footprint as small as this, imagine the effect on the subject of grand conspiracies.

If anyone else can provide facts that either prove or disprove the above, I’d be grateful. It’s really bugging me now.
 
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Possible apologies in advance - I am not overly convinced of the infallibility of my memory and my recall may well be off, but I’ve been reading the latest reports of this case with a frown of confusion, because I think an important narrative shift could possibly have taken place in its retelling.

I was working in Edinburgh when the remains were discovered at Gogarburn, and read the stories in the Scottish paper press at the time that details of the discovery were released to the media.

My understanding then was that the details of Saima Ahmed’s journey were previously unknown, and only effectively reverse engineered by the police after the body was found - back in the August of 2015, beyond knowing that she had got on a train at Wembley station, no-one actually had a clue where Saima Ahmed had travelled to.

However, the implication in the wording of current reporting appears to suggest that the general destination was known at the time of the disappearance (rather than discovered several months later). If my memory is in fact correct, then subsequent reporting has effectively, if unintentionally, spun this reverse engineering back around to create an assumption that the destination was known all along - and it may be evidence of the speculative nature of this process that different media sources suggest different stations for the changes in her journey (Watford, Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes, Birmingham and Wigan are all mentioned, but none with absolute certainty). And, it’s worth pointing out that none of the reports – at least not one I can find - precisely fix the knowledge of Miss Ahmed’s destination at the time of her disappearance with an actual statement, either by police or family.

If this is right, then the overriding reason that Saima Ahmed hasn't been spotted on CCTV is because by the time anyone knew that she’d travelled to Edinburgh it was nearly five months after the fact, and likely that all of the CCTV of any use would have been wiped (I don't think there is any specific regulation regarding the retention of CCTV data in the UK – but 30 days seems to be standard hold time).

Also. The unconfirmed sightings at Portobello – although not established as absolute fact, are often repeated as such. I’d be a little circumspect in regard to such testimony even if it was close to the initial event – but if it only came to light four months later, then I'd have an even harder time taking it at face value. Again, I’ve not found it possible to precisely place the timing of this testimony – which is frustrating, as it might help prove or disprove the initial point.

I spent ages trying to find some clarity on this, but information on the precise details of the case is actually pretty sparse and very repetitive – and the news stories from the times of both the disappearance and the discovery have been subsumed within their own updates over the years. Most articles now state that Saima Ahmed was last seen on CCTV at Wembley, heading for Edinburgh via (insert choice of intermediate station) – I am convinced the second element, although essential to understanding how the story actually developed in real time, is a backdated fact, rather than one which was known at the time of her reported disappearance; the compression of a fact known at the time with another fact which was not.

If I’m right, then it’s an illustration of how a very simple shift in narrative can have a disastrous effect on future understanding – and if it can happen in a case with a footprint as small as this, imagine the effect on the subject of grand conspiracies.

If anyone else can provide facts that either prove or disprove the above, I’d be grateful. It’s really bugging me now.
I thought I had electronic access to the local papers but just checked and I only have online access to the mid 1950’s. Had we been in a normal situation I might have been able to access material at the National Library but of course it is closed.
 
Some miscellaneous comments based on the additional tidbits I found ...

I noticed that no one missed an opportunity to state Ms. Ahmed was living with her "tight-knit" and "loving" family. These ubiquitous allusions to a stable home life were numerous enough to make my antennae quiver, because they implied the family / residential setting was something someone considered a possible issue.

It's apparently the case that no one can prove she arrived in Edinburgh by rail, nor that she continued to travel by rail any farther than Watford Junction. I haven't seen any mention of tickets being found in her handbag as evidence for her travel. The lack of evidence for her arrival in Edinburgh was explained by surveillance video footage having been deleted. It seems to me one can't rule out the possibility she traveled only part-way to Edinburgh by train.

Furthermore, it strikes me this ambiguity opens up the possibility she hadn't originally intended to travel all the way to Edinburgh, and this eventual destination resulted from something that happened earlier and closer to home. Who travels all that distance, entailing at least one overnight stay, carrying only a handbag?

The later / recycled accounts emphasize the golf course as the site where her remains were found. This is misleading. The earliest accounts state her remains were (if only partially) discovered on the grounds of the Gogar Mount House*, and that the ensuring search extended to nearby areas of the adjacent golf course. Tree belts separate the Mount House and golf course grounds.

[*] A detailed overview of this property can be accessed at:
https://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/downloads/file/23027/gogar-mount

Perhaps most importantly ... Ms. Ahmed took off when she was expected to be going to her workplace. This implies intent to travel secretly. Whether the intent was to be gone a day, a week or forever is the big question.
A couple of questions regarding travel, it was reporyed she travelled to Heme Hemstead, what was the evidence base of this?
 
... I’ve been reading the latest reports of this case with a frown of confusion, because I think an important narrative shift could possibly have taken place in its retelling.

Agreed ...

My guess is that her status as a missing person (reported the day after she disappeared) prompted review of surveillance video close to home early on (while the evidence was still available), but somehow this missing person status didn't similarly trigger any effective search for traces of her as far away as Edinburgh. By the time it was determined she was dead in Edinburgh the potential evidence of her arrival by rail had been lost.

It appears that confirmation of her presence in Edinburgh was somehow taken to mean a journey that began by rail must have continued by rail, setting off speculations about possible routes so as to back-fill the gap in explaining what must have happened.
 
A couple of questions regarding travel, it was reporyed she travelled to Heme Hemstead, what was the evidence base of this?

Either (a) there isn't any evidentiary base beyond speculation or (b) the basis for suggesting that intermediate location remains confidential as part of an open investigation.
 
A couple of questions regarding travel, it was reporyed she travelled to Heme Hemstead, what was the evidence base of this?

As I said above, I've also found references to her travelling to Watford, Milton Keynes, Birmingham and Wigan, as well as Hemel Hempstead. I may be wrong, but from what I can make out all of this is based on supposition centred on possible intermediate stations on potential routes from Wembley to Edinburgh.

Her journey to Edinburgh - if going to Edinburgh is what she in fact intended in the first place - was it seems, somewhat roundabout. There are direct trains from King’s Cross – and it would be logical for anyone travelling from London to use this route. Yet she appears to have chosen a more roundabout way.

It may have been a cost thing, but in my experience (and I spend a lot of time on trains – well…before the current unpleasantness, I did) direct routes are not necessarily any more expensive than the alternatives, and often actually cheaper.

However, this is not always the case, and there are other factors, such Bank Holiday timetables and engineering works that might influence the journey. How exactly she planned out her journey that day may be a crucial part of the puzzle – but I 'm not sure we'll ever know the actual details.
 
Agreed ...

My guess is that her status as a missing person (reported the day after she disappeared) prompted review of surveillance video close to home early on (while the evidence was still available), but somehow this missing person status didn't similarly trigger any effective search for traces of her as far away as Edinburgh. By the time it was determined she was dead in Edinburgh the potential evidence of her arrival by rail had been lost.

It appears that confirmation of her presence in Edinburgh was somehow taken to mean a journey that began by rail must have continued by rail, setting off speculations about possible routes so as to back-fill the gap in explaining what must have happened.
Sounds like a bad way to go about it, surely when a missing person report is investigated, to the point where they discover cctv footage of her boarding a train, the logical/usual next step would be to check the cctv footage of the stations on the route of the train she is seen boarding, then do the same for each subsequent leg until you reach final destination, whete upon you track her using city centre cctv cameras, unless she alighed from the wembly park train at a small station that had no cctv and her journey on to Edinburgh was in another vehicle (dead or alive). No wonder the police officers involved were hauled over the coals. On that point do we know who the repremanded/investigating officers were and or their ethnicity?
 
Furthermore, it strikes me this ambiguity opens up the possibility she hadn't originally intended to travel all the way to Edinburgh, and this eventual destination resulted from something that happened earlier and closer to home. Who travels all that distance, entailing at least one overnight stay, carrying only a handbag?
Someone who is trying to leave her "tight-knit" and "loving" family without alerting them to it? Walking out of the door to go to work with a fully packed suitcase would have been a bit of a giveaway. She drew an undisclosed sum of money out of an atm and may have been intending to buy clothes and other items with it. Otherwise her location would have been discovered the moment she reached her destination if she used her bank card to buy something.
 
Sounds like a bad way to go about it, surely when a missing person report is investigated, to the point where they discover cctv footage of her boarding a train, the logical/usual next step would be to check the cctv footage of the stations on the route of the train she is seen boarding, then do the same for each subsequent leg until you reach final destination, whete upon you track her using city centre cctv cameras...

Remember that at this stage, it was just a report of a missing adult. At this stage there was no reason to believe she would be found murdered.

Adults are allowed to "disappear". Every one of us has the right to walk away from family and friends, should we choose, and the family and friends have no legal right to know where we have gone.

Roughly 100,000 adults a year are reported missing in the UK, and 76,000 children. That is a report of a missing person every 90 seconds. As of March 2019 there were an estimated 3,000 adults "long term missing" in the UK. (Source)

There is a practical limit to how much any report can be investigated, and the level of investigation has to balance resources against the "reasons for concern" and against the individual's right to privacy.

There are many "assumptions" that the police may make about a "member of the Asian community" — not least the crude assumptions that every Asian person wishes to be considered to be part of the Asian community, or that the so-called Asian community is an homogenous whole.

Thoughts of honour killings arose earlier in this thread. Other thoughts the police may have had in mind might include the possibilities that she was fleeing an arranged (second) marriage, or was fleeing familial abuse, or was afraid of being forcefully moved to her family's ancestral country.

These cultural considerations or preconceptions apart, any 36 year old divorcee might have any of a number of legitimate reasons to want to disappear and start again.
 
Remember that at this stage, it was just a report of a missing adult. At this stage there was no reason to believe she would be found murdered.

Adults are allowed to "disappear". Every one of us has the right to walk away from family and friends, should we choose, and the family and friends have no legal right to know where we have gone.

Roughly 100,000 adults a year are reported missing in the UK, and 76,000 children. That is a report of a missing person every 90 seconds. As of March 2019 there were an estimated 3,000 adults "long term missing" in the UK. (Source)

There is a practical limit to how much any report can be investigated, and the level of investigation has to balance resources against the "reasons for concern" and against the individual's right to privacy.

There are many "assumptions" that the police may make about a "member of the Asian community" — not least the crude assumptions that every Asian person wishes to be considered to be part of the Asian community, or that the so-called Asian community is an homogenous whole.

Thoughts of honour killings arose earlier in this thread. Other thoughts the police may have had in mind might include the possibilities that she was fleeing an arranged (second) marriage, or was fleeing familial abuse, or was afraid of being forcefully moved to her family's ancestral country.

These cultural considerations or preconceptions apart, any 36 year old divorcee might have any of a number of legitimate reasons to want to disappear and start again.
I agree with all your points, but as i said in my post, at the point the police were actively reviewing cctv footage during the misper investigation, why did they not follow it up by trying to find out where she went from wembly park?
 
I agree with all your points, but as i said in my post, at the point the police were actively reviewing cctv footage during the misper investigation, why did they not follow it up by trying to find out where she went from wembly park?
I do not know the answer because I was not involved, but I am suggesting it was probably a matter of balancing resources against the other considerations.

Assuming the police know exactly which train a person got onto, the maths from there is exponential.

I don't know the railway in question, or the time tables, so I'll make up an example to illustrate:

Imagine that the train she got on had only 5 further stops. That is 5 places she could have got off. (Conceivably, she might even have stayed on the train on its return journey.)

Each of those stations may have had several cameras. Also, she may have caught a different train from the station after waiting anything from a minute or two through to an hour or more, and she may have done so again, and even again.

Each of those possible connecting trains she could have caught would have had several stops, and at each stop there would be the same considerations.

We are all familiar with a binary sequence, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 and how quickly it escalates to really big numbers.

Now recreate that idea with, for example, 4 options at each stage: 1, 4, 16, 64, 256, 1024. Very quickly you get to unmanageable numbers.

Watching one hour of security camera footage from just one camera scanning for a face in a crowd, takes at least an hour.


I am not saying that the police were right or wrong, only that there would quickly become a point when it was neither practicable nor proportionate to check every camera at every possible station and check every possible connecting train.

If they had been looking for a murderer, or a terrorist, it may have been proportionate. Here they were looking for an adult woman who had committed no offence and who gave no appearance of being under duress when she got onto the train.

Checking every possible CCTV camera beyond a certain point would be "trawling" whereas checking bank transactions, phone history, web browser history, and interviewing family and friends would be more likely to produce some specific line of inquiry that could be followed up.

With hindsight, of course, it's easy to say they could or should have done more. However, decisions made at the time needed to be made on the basis of what is known or suspected at the time.

I have never been a police officer, but I have been involved in investigative work and I know how easy it is to approach an inquiry from one point of view that seems reasonable at the time, but seems "obviously wrong" when new information comes to light.
 
I agree with all your points, but as i said in my post, at the point the police were actively reviewing cctv footage during the misper investigation, why did they not follow it up by trying to find out where she went from wembly park?

Without knowing her destination, where would they start? Essentially, she could have travelled anywhere in the UK from Wembley Central; the authorities couldn't possibly review CCTV from every possible station she might have alighted at, because, basically, at the time - before it was known she travelled to Edinburgh - that would effectively be every single railway station in the UK.

As far as I can see, the only realistic chance of working things out would have been by using actual ticket information. I've seen cases where an individual's journey has been worked out via CCTV recordings of ticket office traffic, combined with ticket sales checks using logged times, etc - but I'm pretty sure that this is not always going to be possible.
 
Remember that at this stage, it was just a report of a missing adult. At this stage there was no reason to believe she would be found murdered.

Adults are allowed to "disappear". Every one of us has the right to walk away from family and friends, should we choose, and the family and friends have no legal right to know where we have gone.

Roughly 100,000 adults a year are reported missing in the UK, and 76,000 children. That is a report of a missing person every 90 seconds. As of March 2019 there were an estimated 3,000 adults "long term missing" in the UK. (Source)

There is a practical limit to how much any report can be investigated, and the level of investigation has to balance resources against the "reasons for concern" and against the individual's right to privacy.

There are many "assumptions" that the police may make about a "member of the Asian community" — not least the crude assumptions that every Asian person wishes to be considered to be part of the Asian community, or that the so-called Asian community is an homogenous whole.

Thoughts of honour killings arose earlier in this thread. Other thoughts the police may have had in mind might include the possibilities that she was fleeing an arranged (second) marriage, or was fleeing familial abuse, or was afraid of being forcefully moved to her family's ancestral country.

These cultural considerations or preconceptions apart, any 36 year old divorcee might have any of a number of legitimate reasons to want to disappear and start again.

This!

It seems as though the unfortunate lady's disappearance has often been viewed solely through the 'Asian' lens, by the police, the media and many unconnected people. ('Asia' is such a huge continent, and the word 'Asian' - in the UK at least - seems to be used as shorthand for brown people whose background originates in one of 4 or 5 countries. Those 'Asian' people living here in the UK are as varied and diverse as 'Europeans' in the UK.)

There is a useful 'community' angle for investigation purposes, reaching people whose first language isn't English and communal hubs such as mosques, temples, gurudwaras and local shops, but beyond that surely there are many other routes of enquiry.

Assumptions about the reasons for her fate can effectively sidetrack investigations and eat up police time. There are a multitude of reasons a person disappears - a young Polish man in my local area was reported missing, and only found years later when his bones started to drop out of the dense conifer tree on a golf course - he'd hung himself - up until that point the police were still following enquiries.

If she met a suspicious end, I fear that unless someone connected talks to the authorities then they will get away with it as so little forensic evidence exists (the Shafilea Ahmed case was only officially 'solved' when her sister came forward many years later).
 
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