Bhopal (Crime Against Women): In Madhya Pradesh, around 25% of the girls who go missing every year are never found by the police. In the past four years, the police have completely failed to trace over 4,000 missing girls. These figures are from January 2021 to December 2024, and there are suspicions of human trafficking involved. This is a serious issue for the state. The government runs several schemes like Ladli Laxmi Yojana and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao to empower girls, yet the state’s police system is struggling to locate the missing girls. A major reason for this is the shortage of police personnel. To search for these missing girls, the police have been running Operation ‘Muskaan’ twice a year since 2021. The number of missing girls continues to rise. By the end of 2024, a total of 15,671 girls, including old and new cases, went missing. Of these, the police were able to trace 11,670 girls through Operation Muskaan and other means, but over 4,000 are still unaccounted for.
There is a strong possibility that many of these cases involve abductions related to human trafficking. Just in 2024, 10,400 cases of abduction involving girls and women were registered. When it comes to women, the number of missing cases is also in the thousands. Shockingly, if no crime is committed against a woman, an FIR is not even filed. Between January 2021 and February 2024, Operation Muskaan helped recover 12,567 missing girls, including 659 who were forcibly abducted. Among these, 630 were victims of sexual exploitation, 17 were taken for bonded labor, and 12 were abducted for employment. Furthermore, 2,389 girls admitted to leaving with their boyfriends, and two girls were kidnapped for ransom.
