This is an emergency alert of sort for Odisha. When it comes to missing children, the State prominently occupies the dubious position of number two in the entire eastern India and number three as far as child trafficking is considered.
With an average of four children and around six persons (adults to elders) going missing every day in Odisha, the shocker is nearly three-fourths of them were trafficked both for forced labour or marriage and also for sexual exploitation. Such horrific details have emerged at an anti-human trafficking conference held in New Delhi on Wednesday.
As per an internal assessment on region-wise done by the Union Home Ministry, sources revealed that Odisha is at second in eastern India (which includes Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam and West Bengal) with around 1,400 missing children in the last one year up to September end. While West Bengal tops the eastern region, if the neighbourhood is considered, Chhattisgarh also is far ahead of Odisha with over 3,500 missing children during the same period. But Andhra Pradesh has better figures than Odisha to show off.
Given the enormity, the task of Odisha police now looks more challenging as its immediate response strategy is to rescue the missing/trafficked children and simultaneously also to conduct swift intelligence operations to bust the modules of human traffickers in places right up to at the village level.
As per the information provided by ADG Crime B K Sharma, in the year 2014-15 the State police have rescued around 1,200 missing children and nearly 6,000 missing persons. With the launch of Operation Smile and Muskan, the rescued children rate vis-a-vis total missing/trafficked cases so far in Odisha has shown an improvement from a low around 28 per cent in 2012-13 to around 60 per cent in 2014-15.
However, the worrying fact is that as per the appraisal of the Union Home Ministry, the rate of trafficking or missing children/persons is yet to show any decline in the State. This reveals the operatives of traffickers are still active in State, despite more Integrated Anti-Human Trafficking Units (IAHTU) in place. Child rights activists, however, blame this persistence to delayed response of the State Government in many high burden districts in Odisha. It is only in January this year the Government has decided to bring up more IAHTUs in every district of the State, observed activist Sadashiv Swain.
District-wise analysis reveals that Keonjhar registers the maximum cases of girl child missing followed by Bhadrak, Jharsuguda, Sundergarh, Angul, Ganjam, Kendrapara, Nayagarh and Jajpur among others. In the case of missing boys, Sambalpur leads the pack but was closely followed by Keonjhar, Jharsuguda, Rayagada, Sundergarh, Bhadrak and Angul. Though the missing children are considered as those below 18 years old, the age-group of maximum cases of missing female child are 15-18 years, reveals the data. In 2014, when missing adult females in Odisha were around 1,700; only 600 odd missing of males are reported. The trend observed here reveals that State's mining belt and the Jajpur-Bhadrak corridor along with Ganjam-Kandhamal axis account for maximum such trafficking cases.