Odisha Tops List Of ‘Missing Women’ Cases, Sharp Rise In 2018: NCRB Report

Bhubaneswar: Odisha tops all the the states and Union Territories in the country in terms of the percentage of increase in reports filed with police on ‘missing women’ in 2018. Odisha jumped to the seventh position in this regard in 2018. It stood at the 16th position in the list in the previous year (2017). 

This was revealed in a report released by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). 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.

According to the report, 6,378 cases of ‘disappearance of women’ were registered by their relatives at various police stations in the state in 2016. The number of such cases dropped to 4,187 by around 35 percent  in 2017. However, the figure increased substantially by 144 percent in 2018, when there were 10,193 such cases in Odisha.

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.

According to data, the Odisha Police performed very poorly in tracing the whereabouts of the missing persons as compared to other states. Again, it was at the bottom in the country as the Odisha Police could trace only 25 percent of the women who went missing in 2018.

Odisha Police succeeded in tracing only 29.2 percent men, who reportedly went missing during the same period. Maharashtra, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh are among the other states that reported the maximum number of ‘missing women’ in 2018.