A critical issue
Just few days back parliament was undertaking a discussion on the number of missing people reported across India every year. While the parliamentarians raised concerns over the cases of missing children and women in the country they advocated for a stringent law to check human trafficking.
According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, 47,000 innocent children are missing or untraced in the country. Besides, what is even more alarming, according to the NCRB data, is that approximately 1.97 lakh women are still missing.
Ironically, the figures that have been put forth are the official figures and the number of cases which do not reach the authorities can be much higher that what is actually reported as the Supreme Court recently said that in India, one child goes missing every eight minutes.
Since the issue is of utmost importance, some serious questions are being raised over the disappearance of children and women. One such question is what happens to these children, and where do these women go? The truth is that it’s not just a case of missing people. This seems a conspiracy of organised human trafficking.
These kidnapped innocent children and women are forced into begging, prostitution, bonded labour, and even pushed into the hell of organ trade reflecting a humanitarian crisis.
Data also suggests that between 2019‑2021, 13.13 lakh (1.313 million) women and girls were reported missing, with Madhya Pradesh accounting for the largest share ( 2 lakh) followed by West Bengal. Of these, 10.6 lakh were women over 18 and 2.5 lakh were girls’ under 18.
Notably, the number of missing children has shown a generally upward trend since 2018, with a spike in 2021(+30.8 % vs 2020) and a modest rise in 2022 (+7.5 % vs 2021).
The problem of disappearances of women and children has been ignored and not tackled the way it should be. This is reflected by the figures that have been put forth on recovery of these missing people.
Data suggests that so far West Bengal traced 12,546 of its missing children, leaving 6,994 untraced; Madhya Pradesh recovered 11,161 and still has 3,926 untraced. These figures reflect that the issue of missing people should be considered as human trafficking cases, and a stringent legislation for human trafficking prevention and rehabilitation care from the government needs to be put in place.
Besides, the law enforcing agencies, especially the police needs to take up the issue pan India and help consolidate the data on the number of missing people. The police and other agencies also need to create a national missing person tracking portal under the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Various AI tools including facial recognition needs to be made part of the portal so that, if a child or a woman is missing, then they can be identified through this technology in any corner of the country.
This step needs to be taken immediately as the issue of missing women and children cannot be ignored any further.
