A search has been announced after the wife of Tashkent's Yakkasaray district prosecutor, Zaynab Asadova, went missing on 28 December 2012.

The disappearance of Asadova was reported by the head of the Human Rights Alliance of Uzbekistan (HRAU), Elena Urlayeva, who learnt about this on 8 January at the Yakkasaray district interior department where she was taken after another picket outside the Uzbek Interior Ministry building.

After spending eight hours in the police department, Urlayeva became a witness to "active work to search for the prosecutor's disappeared wife".

"In offices on the first floor interior department staff urgently printed out many bodily and facial description of Zaynab Asadova," she said. "Those who will find the prosecutor's wife are promised a bounty worth 10 million sums [$3,700 at the black market rate]."

The activist assumed that Asadova "could be kidnapped in retort for abuses of office by the prosecutor".

A week has passed since Asadova's disappearance but only few days ago posters announcing a search for the woman appeared on advertising boards in the capital.

The description of Asadova says that she disappeared between 2230 and 2300 on 28 December but it does not specify where this happened.

It says that she is a 155-cm tall and plump. She wore a grey velour track suit and a black leather jacket. She had a black wool headscarf and held a green fabric bag.

The poster also indicates telephone numbers for those who possess information about Asadova and promises a bounty for it.

Commenting on the situation, the chairman of the Initiative Group of Independent Human Rights Activists of Uzbekistan (IGIHRAU), Surat Ikramov, noted that the disappearance of the capital's district prosecutor showed
"the impotence of authorities which are not capable of finding her live or dead".

And all this is taking place amid the shortage of budget funds about which the authorities do not care as they rob their own people, the activist added.

Uznews.net