Could this grainy 70s photo help police solve a missing person case?

Back in the summer of 2023, PC Shaun Reeve cracked open a cold case of a young woman who went missing nearly 50 years ago. With fresh eyes, he poured through the file looking for new clues in the hope he might be able to discover what happened to her all those decades ago.  

The case belonged to 20 year-old Sarjit Kaur Mann, an ‘outstanding student’ who had moved to Birmingham from India with her family and was studying maths at Birmingham University. In the Autumn of 1976, she went on a road trip to France with her brother and sister-in-law – but never returned home. 

Four days into their trip, on September 22, the trio visited a beach in the south of France, where Sarjit reportedly made friends with three European, white females.

While her brother and sister in law headed back to England two days later on 24 September, the ‘reserved and sensible’ Sarjit chose to delay her return until 27 September to continue sightseeing. That was the last time any of her family would see her.

Going through the notes, PC Reeve tells Metro: ‘On 27 September, an unknown female who used the name Jane called the family home and told them Sarjit had drowned on a beach. The origin of this call was never traced. Unfortunately, we’ve been unable to track ‘Jane’ down.’

When he started work on the case in 2023, the police constable for West Midlands Police explored ‘everything’.

He made fresh inquiries with a different perspective on the case – trying to establish whether she was alive by making appeals on social media for the public to get in touch with information, and checking GP appointments, whether she has been known to police, if she’d been in contact with family, possible hospital admissions, and phone book inquiries. His team has liaised with the national Crime Agency and put out missing person reports abroad. 

‘Anything that anyone could think of in terms of proof of life, we covered,’ he says. ‘We have made hundreds of inquiries with the hope that she’s alive – that she started a new life elsewhere. Inquiries have taken us to countries around the world. We know she hasn’t contacted family since. If she has passed away, we are very much relying on DNA – relying on the body to be recovered, but that hasn’t been done yet.’

When he initially started on her case, the only photo of Sarjit was a black and white, blurred photocopy. 

‘It was terrible quality,’ remembers PC Reeve. ‘It was really grainy, and looked nothing like her. But it was the image we had and there was little we could do to retrieve new photos as this was going back to the 70s.’ 

Photos of missing people can play a vital role in finding a missing person. Only recently, PC Reeve located a person that disappeared in 1972 after enlarging a microfiche photo of her. ‘It went out in the media and within 24 hours, we found them,’ he says.  

However, a photo is only one part of the puzzle. When a missing report is phoned in to 999, the call handler asks a series of 12 questions to determine if the person is missing and what risk level they are, such as do they pose a threat to themselves or others, do they have any medical issues?

The response officers then carry out basic, initial inquiries such as knocking on the doors of neighbours, talking to family members, and checking hospital admissions. 

‘If they are classed as missing, they go onto a specific system,’ PC Reeve explains. ‘We can have anywhere from 20-90 missing people a day that have recently been reported.’

Investigations can go on for months, but the officer says ‘most’ are found during this stage. If they aren’t, and all ‘lines of inquiries’ are exhausted, the missing person case is then transferred to PC Reeve’s cold case missing person team, officially known as the Review Team of the Missing Person Investigation Team.

‘We never stop looking for them,’ he says. ‘They are forever on the system as open.’

When Reeve begins work on a cold case, he starts from the very beginning. 

‘Even inquiries that have been done, I’ll redo,’ he says. ‘Initially you’re looking for proof of life inquiries. One inquiry could lead to 20. Then before you know it, you’re looking at hundreds of different inquiries from one missing person.’

He admits he has become ‘a bit obsessed’ with some cases. ‘If I think of anything, it’s going to be explored and investigated until there is literally nothing else,’ he explains . ‘I make a list – could be 100 things– and then just tick them off as I go along.’

Some cases’ complexity snowball as PC Reeve ‘leaves no stone unturned.’

‘One simple line of enquiry can lead to dozens of other lines of investigation. We have had missing person cases where on the face of it, there is nothing “unusual” about the circumstances of them leaving home, but more than 20 years after, there is still no trace or proof of life for them.

‘This is why we explore every possible theory and line of enquiry, no matter how unlikely they seem.’

But some can be ‘quite simple,’ he adds. 

‘The other week, I found someone who went missing in 1975. He didn’t even know he had been reported missing. I did a Department of Work and Pensions check (something we do to see if the missing person has accessed government services and may be living and working in another part of the country) and managed to get a phone number for him. I called on the off chance it was him – and it was. We found it really funny.’

When West Midlands Police put together a specialist team of three officers to investigate cold cases in 2022, there were 300 unresolved cases. Now, there are only 100. Approaching families who thought their loved one had been forgotten by the police can be very moving, says PC Reeve. 

‘To touch base with them after years or even decades is kind of emotional,’ he explains. ‘It makes it more than a job.’

Recently, he spoke with a mother whose son went missing years ago. 

‘It’s someone who we think probably went overboard between France and England,’ he says.   ‘She gave me a hug and said she didn’t think police were still looking. I told her we never forget.’

Some families, especially those who have very recently had a loved one go missing, want contact daily. Others only want to be contacted occasionally with very pertinent information. 

Even though he can’t always give a definitive answer as to what happened to the loved one, PC Reeve says it can bring ‘closure’ when a family knows police have done everything to find them.

He adds that when someone goes missing there are four categories that person could fall into: leaving on their own accord (which could include suicide), medical reasons or accidents, third party involvement, and getting lost. However, it  isn’t always clear cut as to what category the person falls in, so Reeve explores each, ruling out which reason wouldn’t apply. 

It means that even though he may not be taking heaps of paperwork home each night, PC Reeve’s brain is always ticking over, wondering what he can do the next day to find people – what he might have missed. 

‘This is my dream job,’ he says, adding that after nine years of looking for missing people, he’s yet to discover a stereotypical type person who goes missing ‘Every case is different.’  

However, despite PC Reeve’s very best efforts, Sarjit’s disappearance has yet to be explained. 

In December 2024, he finally able to get a clearer photo of Sarjit from her nephew, who had been six at the time of Sarjit’s disappearance, to assist his search. 

‘By putting this enhanced photo out, we are hoping someone who recognises Sarjit will trigger old memories in people who knew her,’ he says.

Reeves recently met with Sarjit’s two brothers ‘who are still looking for closure and miss their sister enormously.’

‘Sarjit’s case has remained unsolved for nearly 50 years and one of my main goals is to make as many people aware of it as possible,’ he concludes. ‘This is one of West Midlands Police’s longest unsolved cases and, while we don’t know what happened to Sarjit, she deserves to have people looking for her. My aim is to bring that closure to her remaining family.’