The body of an 18-year-old student from Hyderabad, who had been missing in Finland since May, has been found in the sea in Helsinki, according to an email sent by the Indian Embassy in Finland to his family.
The Indian Embassy informed the family on Friday that Finnish authorities had recovered the body of Manideep Reddy from the sea in Helsinki, the family’s lawyer KLB Kumar said on Saturday.
Manideep was studying Bachelor’s Programme in Software and Systems Engineering at Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT University) in Finland. He was living in Lahti.
According to Kumar, Manideep was last seen at a mall in Helsinki on May 5, after which he went missing.
The family, however, believes that his death is suspicious. Kumar alleged that the Finnish authorities were intentionally hiding important facts and trying to present the case as a natural death. He claimed the investigation was not carried out properly.
“We have many doubts. After two months, the body has been recovered. We strongly feel that it is a suspicious death and not a natural death,” Kumar said, adding that Manideep’s parents believe something happened to him on May 5 itself.
He urged the Central government to help Manideep’s parents travel to Finland so they could see his body and make their own enquiries. “We demand that the death should be investigated properly. They (Finnish authorities) are supposed to investigate the circumstances under which the boy disappeared and how the death occurred,” he said.
Kumar also claimed that Finnish police had initially shared updates with the family after the missing person’s case was registered, but communication stopped after May 29.
Earlier, on June 19, Manideep’s father, Gujja Muthyam Reddy, had said that one of his son’s friends from Delhi had filed a missing person’s complaint with Finnish police at the family’s request.
He had alleged that after May 29, all communication from the Finnish authorities stopped despite repeated emails and phone calls from the family seeking updates on the investigation. The family has continued to demand a detailed investigation into the circumstances surrounding Manideep’s disappearance and death.