Dozens of community and family members gathered at a prayer vigil over the weekend for the safe return of a 14-year-old girl who has been missing in Conway, Arkansas, for over 25 days.
Community members at the vigil on Saturday pleaded for more volunteers to join the search party for Tanvi Marupally.
Jenny Wallace, a search party organizer, said they are planning to canvas the city for more clues regarding her disappearance, KATV reported.
We are trying to go through every neighborhood and ask the people to look at their Ring doorbell cameras. It is very important for every bit of footage to be watched because we usually have 30 days before the cameras re-record over them or expire. We are coming up on that timeline.
The vigil was held on Saturday in hopes that Marupally would show up, as that was also the day she was scheduled to take her ACT college entrance exam.
Marupally was last seen by a surveillance camera on Jan. 17 walking past the school bus she usually takes to get home from Conway Junior High School.
Authorities and the teenager’s family believe she ran away from home after learning that they might be deported to India.
The girl reportedly learned that her father, Pavan Roy, could lose his job after his company, which is in the tech industry, laid off about 10% of its employees.
Pavan is currently staying in the United States on a working visa while his wife is on a dependent visa. If he were to lose his job, his family would only have 10 days to make travel arrangements back to India.
I said… let you and your mom first go back to India, let me figure out what and how the system works out, get a proper job, and then call you back. [She said] ‘What, go back to India? Why should I go back to India? I’ve been here.’
After the girl went missing, her father said in a video appeal that there was nothing to worry about anymore as he had applied for a dependent visa and his wife was granted a working visa.
Marupally’s mother Eadara Sridevi issued a plea last month for her daughter to return.
Please come back. Please, Tanvi, try to understand. Please come back. She’s the motivation we both to come over here. If she’s not there, we don’t have purpose to come here, do all these things. Everyday we are walking on the edge, trying to keep her, providing a better life. And safe especially, particularly safe.
In a statement last week, Conway Police spokesperson Lacey Kanipe said that they are continuing to remain positive in their efforts to reunite Marupally with her family.
“The more people that can be involved, that’s better just because you’re able to cover more ground and look for her and help us,” Kanipe said, according to THV11 reported. “People talk and communicate and share the story.”
Authorities previously reported having searched for the girl in her school, the county library and both Cadron Settlement Park and Wooly Hollow State Park.
Conway Police Department has reportedly asked the U.S. Marshals Service and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for assistance in their search, while the teenager’s family has put up a $5,000 reward for any information that could lead to her.
Those who might have information on the girl’s whereabouts are urged to contact the Conway Police Department at 501-450-6120.
