Celebrities who went missing like Rahul Gandhi

Melbourne, Munger or Mallorca — where is Rahul Gandhi? We'll know when he addresses a Delhi rally on April 19. Until then, look at other famous people who went MIA…then resurfaced

Kurt Cobain, 6 days

From the time the Nirvana lead singer scaled the walls of a rehab centre in Seattle, to his alleged suicide discovered on April 8, 1994, he went missing intermittently. His mother filed a missing person's report, yet Cobain kept in touch with his wife Courtney Love and the family nanny from time to time. Yet because of the circumstances, Cobain's death is one of rock music's biggest mysteries.

Agatha Christie, 10 days

Rumoured to be the original 'Gone Girl', the queen of crime fiction orchestrated her own disappearance. On December 3, 1926, Christie's husband Archie quarrelled with her and asked for a divorce. Christie went missing that night. After a huge manhunt, and with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle even giving her glove to a spirit medium to find her, Christie was discovered in a hotel in Yorkshire. Not murder, she wrote.


Rahul Gandhi, 53 days and counting

It started as 'two-week leave' on February 16, but the Congress president has been extending that for a week, then another… you get the drift. From yoga retreats, to partying in Bangkok, speculation is rife, but baba's whereabouts are still under wraps.

Katherine Jackson, 24 hours

Michael Jackson's 82-year-old mother was reported missing by her nephew Trent on July 15, 2012, but was found the next day, peacefully playing Uno at her home in Arizona. Trent was pulling a stunt, apparently. Not something new for the wacko jacko family.

Kim Jong-Un, 40 days

It was officially put down to "personal discomfort", unofficially the North Korean dictator's disappearance was explained by ankle surgery. South Korean spies said Kim had a cyst in his right ankle, a result of obesity, smoking and a busy work schedule. He reappeared in October 2014, walking stick in hand in a photo handout, appreciating the "diverse coloured tiles" of the houses in a scientist complex. Oh, well.

Vladimir Putin, 10 days

He sneaked off to Switzerland for the birth of his love-child. He suffered a stroke. He was imprisoned in the Kremlin, the victim of a palace coup. He got the flu. The theories raged on in March, until Putin cropped back on March 16, commenting laconically, "It would be boring without gossip."

Parveen Babi, 8 months

The Bollywood siren left the industry and travelled with her spiritual guru UG Krishnamurti. However, friends didn't know where she was until she was found on April 7, 1984 at JFK airport, handcuffed by police and kept with mentally-ill patients because she failed to produce her identification papers. In 1989, she returned to Mumbai, a shadow of herself and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.