Bhubaneswar: The performance of Odisha Police in tracing missing persons during 2019 was found to be dismal as compared to other states – this despite being successful in tracing more missing persons in 2019 than in the previous year.
According to the recently released crime statistics for 2019 by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Odisha Police registered a recovery rate of below 20 per cent of the total persons who were reported missing while many states achieved above 90 per cent success.
As per the NCRB report, as many as 15,317 persons, including 3,300 males and 12,017 females, were reported missing in the state in 2019 as compared to 13,062 persons during the previous year.
Similarly, Odisha Police succeeded in tracing as many as 5,339 persons in 2019, while 4,481 missing persons were found in 2018.
However, despite the slight increase in the number of traced persons, the state police recorded a dismal recovery percentage in 2019 in comparison with other states having quite good recovery percentage.
The cops in state achieved success in tracing only 19.3 per cent missing persons which is second worst in India during 2019. Punjab with 16.7 per cent recovery rate has topped the country in poor performance. However, Punjab outshone Odisha in female persons’ recovery percentage in 2019.
On the other hand, the sleuths of state police were tasked to trace the whereabouts of as many as 5,503 children below 18 years of age which also includes 1,165 minors whom the cops failed to trace during previous years.
The state police also succeeded in finding out as many as 1,490 missing children including 314 boys and 1,176 girls in 2019 as compared to 1,139 during 2018. However, the percentage of tracing of minor children has come down from 32.6 in 2018 to 27.1 in 2019 which means Odisha cops managed to trace around 27 out of the 100 missing minors in 2019.
It was the lowest in the country as compared to states like Kerala where around 95 per cent missing children were recovered during the same period.
