The Fukuoka prefectural police have launched an investigation, suspecting that Sabina Maharjan, a resident of the city´s Minami Ward, could have been involved in foul play. [break]
According to sources familiar with the investigation and the school she was going to, she arrived in Japan in 2008 and started attending the school.
On August 27, she did not show up for lessons and a school staffer contacted her by phone and she said she would be late because her bicycle had got a flat tire, the sources said. It was after this that she went missing, they said.
No one answered her phone after August 28, and on August 31 a friend of hers visited her apartment and found the entrance door locked, according to the sources.
The school contacted the police who then checked inside the apartment and found only a bed and table left there with sundry goods, and other items gone. The bicycle she used for going to school has also not been found.
Most of the tuition fees had been paid by her family living in Nepal before she was admitted, the sources said. She had a part-time job to pay for day-to-day necessities.
She was never late in paying her monthly apartment rent of around 36,000 yen and regularly attended school lessons. She did her part-time job and there was nothing particularly strange up until her disappearance, the sources said.
There is no official record of her departure from Japan since the disappearance and her family has received no contact, the sources said.
A source at the school said, "She had no problems in lessons or life and we simply can´t think of any reason that she had to pull a vanishing act. We are worried."
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