“His room is still the same,” Pip says, “and there’s always a chair missing from the table.” Her brother, Sanjiv Kundi, was 41 when he disappeared in Paris 11 years ago.
She has visited the French capital many times since he left their family home in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, for a week’s holiday, but she always wonders if she’ll see his face in the crowds.
Sanjiv was “the object of my parents’ affection,” she says, an only son with four sisters, but he struggled with mental health in the years before his disappearance.
Sanjiv was of striking appearance, about 1.88m tall, with dark, greyish curly hair and a beard. He was wearing glasses, a heavy brown three-quarter coat and brown cargo trousers when he boarded the Eurostar from St Pancras station at 4.22pm.
He arrived at Gare du Nord on the evening of September 25, 2013, but what happened next remains a mystery.
It is believed he returned to the station the next day to buy a ticket for his return journey on October 1st, but there is no CCTV footage and the credit card and mobile phone he used after his disappearance have never been found.
The impact on Sanjiv’s family has been devastating. His parents are now in their 80s and his nephews are grown up but are still far from answering their questions.
Pip wonders if he has ever been the victim of a crime, if something horrible has happened, or if he has just decided to live this way.
If so, she wants him to know that he has been “very lonely” and that his family just wants to know that he is safe, but she doesn’t think he would have wanted to disappear deliberately.
“In this age of all technology, I don’t understand why no one saw my brother that day,” says Pip.
“Someone somewhere knows something.”
Her family is one of many living the nightmare of searching for loved ones who have gone missing overseas.
LBT Global, the charity that helped the relatives of Jay Slater, who disappeared while on holiday in Tenerife, says it receives around 3,000 enquiries a year, of which it takes on around 300-400.
But only a few of them attract as much public attention as the 19-year-old whose body was found in a ravine 29 days after his disappearance, or TV doctor Michael Mosley, 67, who died in Greece four days after disappearing.
Disappeared found dead on the island of Symi.
Middle-aged men and those with mental health issues don’t tend to grab the same headlines as younger, more photogenic or famous people, says Matt Searle, CEO of LBT Global.
But the “extraordinary” case of Madeleine McCann, who was three years old when she disappeared from her holiday home in Portugal on May 3, 2007, set a “very public bar” for people’s expectations.
“The missing foreigner is at the bottom of the mountain”
British police are required to take statements and pass information through Interpol to the relevant foreign police, but police have no powers to investigate.
There are currently 69 yellow notices from Interpol. Yellow notices are police alerts around the world aimed at helping find people, including in cases of suspected kidnapping or disappearance.
Most families don’t get much support from the authorities, and in some countries “missing foreigners are at the bottom of the list,” Matt says, meaning those searching on their own may not be able to. To do that, read the traffic signs.
“It’s a very lonely world for people with missing people overseas,” he says.
“A key part of any operation is to explain why the British police, the prime minister and the foreign secretary are all not flying there,” he says.
“That’s not going to happen. We have to explain to the British government that they can’t do that. British police are not going to go out in helicopters and search for them, we’re not going to get anything out of that.
“But we are thinking that, depending on what the case is, we could use drones to find local people, mobilise local search and rescue, or raise funds to get local support.”
“We were in the morgue.”
Pip’s family are virtually out of contact with the French police and, a year after Sanjiv’s disappearance, she says, their file had been shoved in a drawer so they had to search for him themselves.
She went to homeless areas of Paris, handed out leaflets and posters and appeared on French radio and television.
“We’ve been in the morgue, we’ve been in the hospital,” she says. “And it’s unbelievable that we still haven’t found the slightest clue as to what happened to him when he left the station.”
Pip was supported by the charity Missing People. He says that 170,000 people are reported missing in the UK every year – one every 90 seconds – but that only details of 38 people missing overseas are listed.
These include the high-profile cases of Madeleine McCann and Ben Needham, who was 21 months old when he went missing on the Greek island of Kos in 1991.
Sanjiv has received some attention over the years, but seeing coverage of high-profile cases makes Pip sometimes think, “Why not my brother?”
About 80% of cases are solved
LBT Global is based on this as a specialist organisation. The organisation, which helps families whose relatives have gone missing overseas, has around 860 unsolved cases, some dating back 20 years.
The aid organisation is able to tell us what happened to around 80% of the people it works with. Matt says around half of those have a happy ending.
Alex Batty disappeared in 2017 at the age of 11 after being taken on a planned trip to Spain with his grandfather by his mother Melanie Batty, who was not his legal guardian.
They lived “away from civilisation” for six years, leading a nomadic life in the south of France, until Alex decided to leave and was spotted by a French delivery driver near Toulouse, roaming around on a skateboard in the dark.
Just before Christmas last year, he was reunited with his grandmother and legal guardian, Susan Caruana, at their old home in Oldham, Greater Manchester.
In other cases, missing people are found in prison or have died overseas.
“It might give them some peace of mind if we can tell them that someone has died. Then at least they can get over their grief and we can arrange the return of the body and a funeral,” Matt says.
“And it’s surprising how often families say, ‘I wish I’d known, not just that I didn’t know, but that they were dead.'”
Even harder, he says, are families who say they’re alive and well but never say, “I want to talk to them again.” The reasons vary, but usually include family breakdown, criminal activity within the family, or simply wanting to leave their old lives behind.
“Never give up hope.”
In these cases, Matt has to tell the families, “They told me they don’t want to be found, they don’t want contact.”
But even lives in limbo like Pip’s family are incredibly difficult.
They’ve been through every stage of grief, from shock to denial to depression and anger. “Why isn’t anyone looking for him?” the headline reads, “It’s all coming back.”
“Anyone who has had a family member go missing can almost feel and touch the emotions this family was going through,” Pip says.
LBT Global’s oldest case dates back to 2004 or 2005, but Matt says his charity’s work has found people who have been missing for more than 20 years.
“My message to families is to never give up hope,” he says.
Missing People runs a free and confidential helpline for those affected by a disappearance. You can text or call them on 116 000 or send an email to 11600@missingpeople.org.uk.
