Missing woman Anu Solanki is alive, authorities say

Karan C. Jani, 23, is believed to have left the Chicago area with friend and missing person Anu Solanki according to local authorities Friday, Dec. 28, 2007. (Cook County Sheriff photo)

By Lolly Bowean and Vikki Ortiz | Tribune staff reporters

10:17 PM CST, December 28, 2007

UPDATE: Anu Solanki returned to the area and her family has arranged for her to meet with Cook County Sheriff's investigators at an undisclosed location Friday night, according to a sheriff's office news release. No other details were immediately released.

A missing northwest suburban woman who was the focus of a four-day search along the Des Plaines River is alive and traveling with a 23-year-old California man, police said Friday after checking cell phone records.

Anu Solanki, 24, who moved to the Chicago area after her marriage in May, has not contacted her family or husband, Dignesh, since Monday afternoon, when she left work at a gift shop in the Westin Chicago North Shore Hotel in Wheeling.

But Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said Solanki appears to be alive and traveling with a male friend, Karan C. Jani, 23, who graduated this year from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and also has lived recently in Pennsylvania. Authorities do not know where they may be headed.

Using cell phone records, detectives learned that Solanki was in contact with Jani many times on the day she disappeared. Police say Solanki may have met Jani at a forest preserve parking lot about 2 miles south of the Westin after she left work, ostensibly to discard a broken Hindu idol.

The statue of the Hindu god Ganesh had been used during her wedding but was broken in transit from New Jersey, where the couple was married.

Authorities said they have not found the idol. They think she went to the forest preserve near Des Plaines River Dam No. 1 to meet Jani.

After not hearing from her for several hours, Dignesh Solanki asked a family member and a friend to look for his wife. They found her Honda Civic, still running, in the forest preserve parking lot at Hintz Road and Milwaukee Avenue.

On the day she disappeared, Solanki placed a call to a female friend about 1:40 p.m. In that conversation, she told her friend she was at the river near the dam, but phone records showed she was near DeKalb, detectives said. She also indicated in that call that a car with four male passengers may have been following her, which may have played a role in her husband's worries about her safety.

Cook County authorities released a photo today of Jani and asked anyone who has seen the two to contact police. Dart said that at this point, police believe no crime has been committed but appeal for the public's help in locating Solanki.

He also said there has been no recent activity on her cell phone.

Authorities said they don't know how Solanki and Jani met, but phone records show they had been in contact for about a year. Investigators started getting phone records Thursday and noticed the pattern of calls between Solanki and Jani.

Before announcing that they believed Anu Solanki is alive, investigators from the Cook County sheriff's police called Solanki's husband and her older brother, Dhiren Patel, 26, to a sheriff's police station. They were accompanied by Anu Solanki's mother, who drove with relatives from Virginia this week.

Patel expressed relief on his family's behalf after the announcement by authorities.

"We are really sad that this thing happened like that, but we are happy" that Solanki is alive, Patel said on the porch of the Solanki home in the 9400 block of Meadow Lane in unincorporated Cook County near Des Plaines.

Patel said Solanki's husband was resting after hearing the news and was unavailable for comment.

"He's kind of sad, but he'll be all right," Patel said.

Patel said he didn't know Jani, and he couldn't explain why his sister would leave under such circumstances. In interviews this week, he described his sister and Dignesh Solanki as "a successful couple."

Other family members have gathered from across the country at the home.

In the last few days, forest preserve police on foot and in boats have combed the banks of the Des Plaines for 6 miles between Dam No. 1, where Anu Solanki's car was found, and Dam No. 2, just north of Kensington Road in Mt. Prospect.

Solanki had worked for about six weeks as a cashier at Feelings Gift Shop, said co-worker Nancy Bridgeman.

Bridgeman said she was told Wednesday that Solanki closed the gift shop at noon Monday because business was slow.

Alkesh Patel, 35, a cousin of Anu Solanki, said she came to the U.S. from India about 10 years ago with her family.

They stayed with relatives in New Jersey for two years before moving to Charlottesville, Va., Alkesh Patel said

After graduating from high school, Solanki received an associate's degree in biotechnology from Piedmont Virginia Community College in Charlottesville, where most of her family still lives, her brother said.

Her mother introduced her to Dignesh, and they dated for two years before they were married, her brother said.