Every time an e-challan arrived on his phone, Praveen Kumar Reddy feared the worst. The notices carried the registration number of his family’s motorcycle that had vanished nearly a decade earlier, even though the traffic violations were being committed hundreds of kilometres away in Hyderabad. What began as a puzzling notice soon turned into a nightmare. If someone was using the motorcycle to rack up fines, what would happen if it was involved in a serious crime?

For Praveen’s family in Koilakuntla in Andhra Pradesh’s Nandyal district, the black Hero Glamour was their first motorcycle. Bought in 2013 by his farmer father, C. Venkateswara Reddy, it was part of the family’s daily life before disappearing without a trace three years later.