Bhubaneswar: A report released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) revealed that Odisha recorded a steep rise in the number of cases registered in connection with ‘missing women’ in 2018. The NCRB report on ‘Crime Records for 2018’ comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s directions to analyse incidents of trafficking of women and children in the country.
The report states that 6,378 cases of ‘disappearance of women’ were registered by their relatives at various police stations in the state during 2016. The number of such cases dropped to 4,187 by around 35 per cent in 2017. However, the figure increased substantially by 144 per cent in 2018, when Odisha witnessed 10,193 such cases.
In fact, Odisha jumped to the seventh position in the list of states with the highest number of ‘missing women’ cases in 2018. The state stood at 16th position in the list during the previous year. Alarmingly, Odisha tops the states and Union Terrorires in terms of the percentage increase in reports filed with police on ‘missing women’ in 2018.
Similarly, the number of children who went missing in the state in 2018 too has gone up as compared to the previous year. As many as 2,244 children reportedly went missing in 2017, while the figure rose to 2,326 in 2018.
Data further revealed the extremely poor performance of Odisha Police in tracing the whereabouts of the missing persons as compared to other states. The state was at the bottom among the states and Union Territories as Odisha Police could trace only 25 per cent of the women who went missing during 2018.
Similarly, Odisha Police succeeded in tracing only 29.2 per cent males who reportedly went missing during the same period. Meanwhile, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh are among the other states that reported maximum number of ‘missing women’ in 2018.