In a shocking revelation, it has come in notice that thirty one thousand women and girls have gone missing in Madhya Pradesh. Believing the official data, over 31,000 women and girls are reported missing between 2021 to 2024. In the list, 28,857 women and 2,944 girls in the state are missing with an average of 28 woman and three girls on a daily basis.
The data came forth after Congress MLA and former Home Minister Bala Bachchan raised a query on the same.
Sadly, the most alarming situation has evolved from MP’s Ujjain, where 676 women are known missing in the last two and half years but strangely not a single case has been registered.
Despite the spike in disappearances, just 724 missing cases have been formally reported statewide, reflecting a similar lack of reporting in other areas.
With 2,384 cases, Indore has the highest number of reported missing women. Just 16 cases of the 479 women who have gone missing for more than a month have been reported in Indore alone. With 245 cases, the Sagar district has been reported to have the largest incidence of missing girls.
The dearth of reports in Ujjain and other regions raises the possibility that many families are reluctant to report a missing person because of social stigma, worry about the consequences, or mistrust of the authorities.
The Home Ministry submitted data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) to parliament in July 2023, indicating that over 13.13 lakh women and girls went missing in the nation in three years between 2019 and 2021. The majority of these cases occurred in Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal.
According to the data, 2,51,430 girls under the age of eighteen and 10,61,648 women above the age of eighteen went missing nationwide between 2019 and 2021.
Between 2019 and 2021, 1,60,180 women and 38,234 girls went missing in Madhya Pradesh alone.
The administration also reported to Parliament on the steps it has taken to ensure women’s safety throughout the nation, including the passing of The Criminal Law (Amendment), Act, 2013, which effectively deters sexual offenses.
The Emergency Response Support System, which the government just introduced, offers a single, globally recognized number (112)-based system for all emergencies throughout India and computer-assisted field resource dispatch to the site of distress.
