‘It’s a very lonely world’: The Brits who go missing abroad

Published

1 year ago

August 31, 2024

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“His room is still the same” and “there’s always a missing chair around the table”, says Pip, whose younger brother Sanjiv Kundi was 41 when he vanished in Paris 11 years ago.

She has visited the French capital many times since he left the family home in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, for a week’s holiday – always wondering if she will see his face in the crowd.

Sanjiv was the “apple of my parents’ eye”, she says, their only son surrounded by four sisters, but he struggled with his mental health in the years before his disappearance.

Distinctive looking, standing at around 6ft 2inch inches tall with dark, greying curly hair and a beard, Sanjiv was wearing glasses, a heavy brown, three-quarter length coat and brown cargo trousers when he took the 4.22pm Eurostar from St Pancras.

He arrived at Gare du Nord station on the evening of 25 September 2013 but what happened next remains a mystery.

He is believed to have returned to the station the following day to buy a ticket home for 1 October but there’s no available CCTV footage, and his cards and mobile phone have not been used since he went missing.

The impact on Sanjiv’s family has been devastating, his parents now in their 80s, his nephews all grown up, are still no closer to getting any answers.

Pip wonders if he’s been a victim of crime, if something sinister has happened to him, or if he’s decided to live that way.

‘Somebody somewhere knows something’

If he has, she wants him to know he’s “deeply missed” and his family just want to know he’s safe – but she does not think he intentionally wanted to go missing.

“In this day and age, with all the technology we have, I can’t understand why nobody saw my brother that day,” says Pip.

“Somebody somewhere knows something.”

Her family is one of the many living with the nightmare of searching for a loved one who has gone missing abroad.

The LBT Global charity, which helped Jay Slater’s relatives after he disappeared while on holiday in Tenerife, says it gets about 3,000 enquiries a year and takes on about 300 to 400 of those cases.

But only a fraction get the same type of publicity as the 19-year-old, whose body was found in a ravine 29 days after he went missing, or television doctor Michael Mosley, 67, who was found dead four days after he disappeared on the Greek island of Symi.

Middle-aged men and those with mental health issues tend not to generate the same headlines as the young, photogenic or famous, says Matt Searle, LBT Global’s chief executive.

But the “extraordinary” case of Madeleine McCann, who was aged three when she disappeared from her holiday apartment in Portugal on 3 May 2007, set a “very public benchmark” for what people expect.

‘A missing foreigner is bottom of the pile’

Police in the UK have a duty to take statements and pass the information through Interpol to the relevant foreign police force, but they do not have any jurisdiction to carry out an investigation.

There are currently 69 Interpol yellow notices – the global police alerts issued to help locate people, including cases of suspected kidnappings and abductions – for British people, including Madeleine.

Most families will not get much support from the authorities and in some countries, “a missing foreigner is absolutely bottom of the pile”, says Matt, while those who go out to search themselves may not even be able to read the road signs.

“It’s a very lonely world for people who’ve got someone missing overseas,” he says.

“A huge part of every operation is explaining why the British police, the prime minister, the foreign secretary, aren’t all flying out there,” he says.

“It just doesn’t happen. You have to explain that the British government can’t do that. The Met Police aren’t going to be flying out in helicopters, going to look for them, you know, we’re not going to get any of that.

“But what we do is say, depending on what the case needs, we could try and find a local guy with a drone, mobilise local search and rescue, or fundraise to get on-the-ground support.”

‘We’ve been to the morgues’

Pip’s family has had virtually no contact with the French police and a year after Sanjiv went missing his file was shoved in a drawer, she says, so they were left to drive the search themselves.

She went to areas in Paris that were popular with rough sleepers, handed out leaflets and posters and appeared on French radio and TV.

“We’ve been to the morgues. We’ve been to the hospital,” she says. “And you can’t believe you still can’t find a scrap of anything to tell us what happened when he left that station.”

Pip has been assisted by the Missing People charity. It says 170,000 people a year, or one every 90 seconds, are reported missing in the UK, but lists the details of just 38 people missing abroad.

They include the high-profile cases of Madeleine McCann and Ben Needham, who was 21 months old when he disappeared on the Greek island of Kos in 1991.

While Sanjiv has attracted some publicity over the years, the coverage of the famous cases sometimes makes Pip think: “Why not my brother?”

Around 80% of cases resolved

LBT Global, which specialises in helping families whose relatives are missing abroad, has around 860 open cases, some going back 20 years.

The charity is able to tell around 80% of the people it works with what happened. Around half of those are happy endings, says Matt.

Alex Batty went missing aged 11 in 2017 after his mother Melanie Batty, who was not his legal guardian, took him on a pre-arranged trip to Spain with his grandfather.

They lived “off-grid” leading a nomadic lifestyle in southern France for six years until Alex made the decision to walk out and was found walking in darkness carrying his skateboard by a French delivery driver near Toulouse.

He was reunited with his grandmother and legal guardian Susan Caruana at his former home in Oldham, Greater Manchester, just before Christmas last year.

In other cases, a missing person is found in prison overseas or dead.

“Even being able to tell them that someone has died can be a relief for them, because at least they can move on with a grieving journey then, and we can make arrangements to repatriate the body, and they can have a burial,” says Matt.

“And it’s surprising how often a family will say, ‘I wish I knew they were dead rather than just not knowing at all’.”

Harder still, he says, is telling a family they are alive and well but they do not want to speak to them ever again. The reasons for this can vary but typically include a family breakdown, criminal activity within a family or they just want to leave their old life behind.

‘Never lose hope’

In those cases, Matt has to tell the family: “I’m sorry, but we can’t search for them anymore. They told me they don’t want to be found and they don’t want to be in touch.”

But living in long-term limbo like Pip’s family is also incredibly hard.

They have gone through all the stages of bereavement, from shock to denial, to depression and anger at “why isn’t anybody looking for him?”

And when a new high-profile missing person’s case like Jay Slater hits the headlines it “brings it all back”.

“Every person out there whose family member is missing could almost feel and touch the emotion that [family] was going through,” says Pip.

LBT Global’s oldest cases date back to 2004 or 2005 but Matt says his charity has located people who have been missing for more than 20 years.

“The message to families is never lose 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.

UK

Specialist teams and online investigators deployed across England and Wales to tackle ‘national emergency’ of violence against women and girls

Published

11 hours ago

December 14, 2025

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Specialist teams and online investigators deployed across England and Wales to tackle 'national emergency' of violence against women and girls

Specialist investigation teams for rape and sexual offences are to be created across England and Wales as the Home Secretary declares violence against women and girls a “national emergency”.

Shabana Mahmood said the dedicated units will be in place across every force by 2029 as part of Labour’s violence against women and girls (VAWG) strategy due to be launched later this week.

The use of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders (DAPOs), which had been trialled in several areas, will also be rolled out across England and Wales. They are designed to target abusers by imposing curfews, electronic tags and exclusion zones.

The orders cover all forms of domestic abuse, including economic abuse, coercive and controlling behaviour, stalking and ‘honour’-based abuse. Breaching the terms can carry a prison term of up to 5 years.

Nearly £2m will also be spent funding a network of officers to target offenders operating within the online space.

Teams will use covert and intelligence techniques to tackle violence against women and girls via apps and websites.

A similar undercover network funded by the Home Office to examine child sexual abuse has arrested over 1,700 perpetrators.

Abuse is ‘national emergency’

Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said in a statement: “This government has declared violence against women and girls a national emergency.

“For too long, these crimes have been considered a fact of life. That’s not good enough. We will halve it in a decade.

“Today we announce a range of measures to bear down on abusers, stopping them in their tracks. Rapists, sex offenders and abusers will have nowhere to hide.”

The target to halve violence against women and girls in a decade is a Labour manifesto pledge.

The government said the measures build on existing policy, including facial recognition technology to identify offenders, improving protections for stalking victims, making strangulation a criminal offence and establishing domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms.

Labour has ‘failed women’

But the Conservatives said Labour had “failed women” and “broken its promises” by delaying the publication of the violence against women and girls strategy.

Shadow Home Secretary, Chris Philp, said that Labour “shrinks from uncomfortable truths, voting against tougher sentences and presiding over falling sex-offender convictions. At every turn, Labour has failed women.”

UK

UK has seen longest period without migrants arriving on small boats since 2018, figures show

Published

1 day ago

December 13, 2025

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UK has seen longest period without migrants arriving on small boats since 2018, figures show

There have been no migrant arrivals in small boats crossing the Channel for 28 days, according to Home Office figures.

The last recorded arrivals were on 14 November, making it the longest uninterrupted run since autumn 2018 after no reported arrivals on Friday.

However, a number of Border Force vessels were active in the English Channel on Saturday morning, indicating that there may be arrivals today.

So far, 39,292 people have crossed to the UK aboard small boats this year – already more than any other year except 2022.

The record that year was set at 45,774 arrivals.

It comes as the government has stepped up efforts in recent months to deter people from risking their lives crossing the Channel – but measures are not expected to have an impact until next year.

December is normally one of the quietest for Channel crossings, with a combination of poor visibility, low temperatures, less daylight and stormy weather making the perilous journey more difficult.

The most arrivals recorded in the month of December is 3,254, in 2024.

Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy met with ministers from other European countries this week as discussions over possible reform to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) continue.

The issue of small boat arrivals – a very small percentage of overall UK immigration – has become a salient issue in British politics in recent years.

Last month, French maritime police announced they would soon be able to intercept boats in the English Channel.

UK

King reveals ‘good news’ in his battle with cancer and urges people to get checked

Published

2 days ago

December 12, 2025

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King reveals 'good news' in his battle with cancer and urges people to get checked

The King has shared in a television address that, thanks to early diagnosis, his cancer treatment can be reduced in the new year.

In a televised address, Charles said his “good news” was “thanks to early diagnosis, effective intervention and adherence to doctors’ orders”.

“This milestone is both a personal blessing and a testimony to the remarkable advances that have been made in cancer care in recent years,” he added.

“Testimony that I hope may give encouragement to the 50% of us who will be diagnosed with the illness at some point in our lives.”

The King announced in February 2024 that he had been diagnosed with cancer and was beginning treatment.

The monarch postponed all public-facing engagements, but continued with his duties as head of state behind palace walls, conducting audiences and Privy Council meetings.

He returned to public duties in April last year and visited University College Hospital Macmillan Cancer Centre in central London with the Queen and discussed his “shock” at being diagnosed when he spoke to a fellow cancer patient.

Sources suggested last December his treatment would continue in 2025 and was “moving in a positive direction”.

The King has chosen not to reveal what kind of cancer he has been treated for. Palace sources have partly put that down to the fact that he doesn’t want one type of cancer to appear more significant or attract more attention than others.

In a statement after the speech aired, a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said: “His Majesty has responded exceptionally well to treatment and his doctors advise that ongoing measures will now move into a precautionary phase.”

Sir Keir Starmer praised the video message as “a powerful message,” and said: “I know I speak for the entire country when I say how glad I am that his cancer treatment will be reduced in the new year.

“Early cancer screening saves lives.”

Early detection can give ‘the precious gift of hope’

His message on Friday was broadcast at 8pm in support of Stand Up To Cancer, a joint campaign by Cancer Research UK and Channel 4.

In an appeal to people to get screened for the disease early, the King said: “I know from my own experience that a cancer diagnosis can feel overwhelming.

“Yet I also know that early detection is the key that can transform treatment journeys, giving invaluable time to medical teams – and, to their patients, the precious gift of hope. These are gifts we can all help deliver.”

Charles noted that “at least nine million people in our country are not up to date with the cancer screenings available to them,” adding: “That is at least nine million opportunities for early diagnosis being missed.

“The statistics speak with stark clarity. To take just one example: When bowel cancer is caught at the earliest stage, around nine in ten people survive for at least five years.

“When diagnosed late, that falls to just one in ten. Early diagnosis quite simply saves lives.”

after months of uncertainty, some relief and reassurance for the King

This is a rare but positive update. The King in his own words speaking about his cancer.

And it’s good news.

Since his diagnosis, he’s received weekly treatment. His work schedule has had to fit around the appointments. And while it’s not stopping, it is being significantly reduced.

He’s responded well, and his recovery has reached, we understand, a very positive stage.

The King’s decision to speak publicly and so personally is unusual.

He has deliberately chosen the moment, supporting the high-profile Stand Up To Cancer campaign, and the launch of a national online screening checker.

It still hasn’t been revealed what kind of cancer he has. And there’s a reason – firstly, it’s private information.

But more importantly, the King knows the power of sharing his story. And with it, the potential to support the wider cancer community.

We are once again seeing a candid openness from the Royal Family. Earlier this year, the Princess of Wales discussed the ups and downs of her cancer journey.

These moments signal a shift towards greater transparency on matters the Royal Family once kept entirely private.

For millions facing cancer, the King’s update is empathy and encouragement from someone who understands.

And after months of uncertainty, for the King himself, some relief and reassurance.

Minor inconvenience of screening ‘a small price to pay’

The King acknowledged that people often avoid screening “because they imagine it may be frightening, embarrassing or uncomfortable”. But, he added: “If and when they do finally take up their invitation, they are glad they took part.

“A few moments of minor inconvenience are a small price to pay for the reassurance that comes for most people when they are either told either they don’t need further tests, or, for some, are given the chance to enable early detection, with the life-saving intervention that can follow.”

Giving his “most heartfelt thanks” to doctors, nurses, researchers and charity workers, the King added: “As I have observed before, the darkest moments of illness can be illuminated by the greatest compassion. But compassion must be paired with action.

“This December, as we gather to reflect on the year past, I pray that we can each pledge, as part of our resolutions for the year ahead, to play our part in helping to catch cancer early.

“Your life – or the life of someone you love – may depend upon it.”