KENT, UK—A week after a grandmother went missing near her home, her family have made a desperate plea for information.
Harjit Chaggar, 69, was last seen outside Linda Matthews estate agents in Luton Road, Chatham, last Monday. Mrs Chaggar has been to a day centre which she goes to every Monday before going to the doctors to collect a prescription. She was seen leaving the King’s Family Practice in Magpie Hall Road at about 3.30pm, before she made her way to a Asian grocery store in Luton Road.
After leaving the shop, she was captured on CCTV outside Linda Matthews, just 10 minutes from her home in Hillside Terrace. Since then there has been no trace of her.
Mrs Chaggar suffers from arthritis and has been without her medication for the last seven days. Her family said her disappearance is completely out of character. Her son Kuldish Chagger, 46, said: “We are just frustrated because we just haven’t got a clue where she could be or what has happened.
“You go through every scenario you can think of. It doesn’t seem to make sense whatsoever. The police are trying their best but it is just not getting anywhere at the moment. We just don’t know what to do.” He added: “Sundays is always a day that we are usually all together as a family, so yesterday was just an appalling day.”
Speaking from the family home, her eldest daughter Balvinder Reehal said: “We’ve been here hoping that she is going to walk in or somebody is going to drop her off. But the house just feel completely empty and just lifeless. Every time the phone goes we keep thinking it is her.”
Mrs Chaggar had been looking forward to a holiday in India to visit family. Her plane tickets are booked for September 21 and in the days before she disappeared, she had just been shopping to buy a new suitcase and started packing.
Mrs Reehal last spoke to her mother on Sunday evening, the night before she went missing. They had been talking about her holiday and said she wanted to take Balvinder away next year for her 50th birthday.
Mrs Reehal said: “It was just a normal phone call. I didn’t think anything of it. As time has gone on we don’t have any ideas about where she might have gone, or what would have possessed her to go anywhere. We keep being asked if she had dementia or anything like that but she had her marbles. She knew what she was doing. She wouldn’t get in a car and she wouldn’t do something that was completely alien. If she was going anywhere it is always planned and it is planned in advance because she knows she has got medication to take, she wouldn’t go anywhere without that.”
“On the CCTV is looks like she is coming home so something must have happened between there and here. All her friends are quite local so if she had gone to somebody’s house she would have told us. She knows my brother’s phone number off by heart, she would have been able to phone and say. If she could get to a phone she would have told us where she is.”
Mr Chaggar discovered his mum was missing at about 8pm last Monday when, after phoning several times and getting her answerphone, he went to her house. He found the door double locked and letters still in the letter box, suggesting that she never made it home from the doctors.
Mrs Reehal said: “She has quite bad arthritis. Without her medication she will be in a lot of pain, she will be struggling.”
She only had a small amount of cash with her and, as she often did, had left her mobile phone at home.
- Anybody with information is asked to call Kent Police on 101. Alternatively, call Crimestoppers on 0800 555111.
