More than 31,000 women and girls have gone missing in Madhya Pradesh over the last three years, officials said.
In Ujjain, at least 676 women went missing but surprisingly, no single case has been registered. On average, 28 women and 3 girls go missing on a daily basis in Madhya Pradesh but only 724 missing cases have been reported.
Indore records 2,384 women missing making it the district with the highest number of cases. 479 women went missing in a month but only 15 cases were registered officially. In Sagar district, 245 cases of missing girls were reported making it the highest number in the entire state.
The stats were brought to notice after a question posed by Congress MLA and former Home Minister Bala Bachchan in the state assembly.
According to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data by the Home Ministry in 2023, approximately 2 lakh girls and women went missing between 2019 and 2021 making up to 68% of all persons missing. In many cases, the victims come from tribal or Adivasis communities. Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra are the two states with the maximum number of women missing.
Last year on July 26 2023, Ajay Kumar Mishra, Minister of Home Affairs told the Rajya Sabha, “ In 2019, the number of girls and women who went missing was 82,084 and 3,42,168.
The numbers have increased with fewer traced and recovered cases. In its report, the NCRB detailed the reasons as “mental illness, miscommunication, misadventure, domestic violence and being a victim of crimes like rape and sexual assault”.
