Over 13 lakh girls and women went missing in country in three years, 2 lakh from MP | India News - The Indian Express

Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Kumar Mishra told the Rajya Sabha on July 26 that 10,61,648 women above 18 years and 2,51,430 girls below 18 years went missing between 2019 and 2021 across the country.

Around 13.13 lakh girls and women went missing in the country in the three years between 2019 and 2021, with Madhya Pradesh accounting for the highest at nearly two lakhs, closely followed by West Bengal, the Ministry of Home Affairs has informed the Rajya Sabha.

Minister of State for Home Affairs, Ajay Kumar Mishra told the Rajya Sabha on July 26 that 10,61,648 women above 18 years and 2,51,430 girls below 18 years went missing between 2019 and 2021 across the country. “In 2019, the number of girls and women who went missing was 82,084 and 3,42,168 respectively, while in 2020, 79, 233 girls and 3,44,422 women went missing,” he said.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) website, 82,619 girls went missing in 2019 and 49,436 were recovered. In the same year, 3,29,504 women went missing, and 1,68,793 were recovered. In 2020, 79,233 girls and 3,44,422 women went missing. Of these, 2,24,043 women were recovered while the number of girls recovered in 2019 was not given. “In 2021, 90,113 girls went missing and 58,980 were recovered. 3,75,058 women went missing and 2,02,298 were recovered,” the data shows.

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According to the Union Home Ministry data compiled by NCRB and tabled in Parliament last week, 1,60,180 women and 38,234 girls went missing between 2019 and 2021 in Madhya Pradesh. “A total of 1,56,905 women and 36,606 girls went missing from West Bengal in the same period. In Maharashtra, 1,78,400 women and 13,033 girls went missing in the said period. In Odisha, 70,222 women and 16,649 girls went missing in the three years while 49,116 women and 10,817 girls went missing from Chhattisgarh in the said period,” according to the data provided to Parliament.

Among Union Territories, Delhi recorded the highest number of missing girls and women. In the national capital, 61,054 women and 22,919 girls went missing between 2019 and 2021 while in Jammu and Kashmir, 8,617 women and 1,148 girls went missing in the said period.

Mishra said that the Centre has taken a number of initiatives for the safety of women, which include the enactment of The Criminal Law (Amendment), Act, 2013, for effective deterrence against sexual offences. “Further, the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2018, was enacted to prescribe even more stringent penal provisions, including death penalty, for the rape of girls below the age of 12 years,” he said. He also said that the Act mandates rapid completion of investigation and other procedures in rape cases .

The government has launched the Emergency Response Support System which provides a pan-India, single internationally recognized number (112) based system for all emergencies, with computer-aided dispatch of field resources to the location of distress. The Ministry “also launched the national database on sexual offenders… to facilitate the investigation and tracking of sexual offenders across the country by law enforcement agencies,” he said.