New Delhi: Over 13.13 lakh girls and women were reported missing across the country in the three years between 2019 and 2021, according to Union Home Ministry data. As per the data, 10,61,648 women above 18 years and 2,51,430 girls below the age of 18 went missing during the three-year period.
According to the data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), Madhya Pradesh accounted for the highest number of missing females, followed by West Bengal.
In Madhya Pradesh, 1,60,180 women and 38,234 girls went missing between 2019 to 2021.
West Bengal reported a total of 1,56,905 missing women and 36,606 missing girls in the same period. In Maharashtra, 1,78,400 women and 13,033 girls went missing, as PTI reported.
In Odisha, 70,222 women and 16,649 girls went missing in the three years while 49,116 women and 10,817 girls went missing from Chhattisgarh in the said period.
Among the Union Territories, Delhi recorded the highest number of missing girls and women. The national capital witnessed 1,054 missing women and 22,919 missing girls between 2019 and 2021 while in Jammu and Kashmir, 8,617 women and 1,148 girls went missing in the said period.
Responding to the data, the government informed Parliament that it has taken a number of initiatives for the safety of women across the country, which include the enactment of The Criminal Law (Amendment), Act, 2013, for effective deterrence against sexual offences.
Further, the Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2018, was enacted to prescribe even more stringent penal provisions, including death penalty, for the rape of girls below the age of 12 years. The Act also mandates completion of investigation and filing of charge sheets in rape cases in two months and trials to be completed in another two months.
The government has also launched the Emergency Response Support System which provides a pan-India, single internationally recognized number (112) based system for all emergencies, with computer-aided dispatch of field resources to the location of distress.
In addition to this, the home ministry launched a cybercrime reporting portal on September 20, 2018, for citizens to report obscene content. The ministry also launched the National Database on Sexual Offenders on September 20, 2018, to facilitate the investigation and tracking of sexual offenders across the country by law enforcement agencies.