Odisha on an average was witnessing missing of as many as four children every day, but in last one month alone, nearly 200 children at the rate over six per day were reported missing.
And when a mere 11 were traced out by the State police last month, then given the sensitivity, naturally, rumours on child-lifters had sparked mayhem across many districts in State where villagers or common folk took law into their hands unleashing brutal violence against anyone on mere “suspicion” of being child-lifters.
Sample this: A total of over 6,500 children from the State have been missing till date, which included untraced children since 2009. last month alone, missing reports of over 190 children were recorded in police stations across the State, reveals data with the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB).
But the most disconcerting part of the story is tracing out rate of missing children was a mere around 23 per cent last year. However, if backlogs of untraced children over the years are included, then rate tumbles further to around 13 per cent. The gap, thus, between missing and tracing of children remained very high in Odisha, which makes people never blink twice before taking law into hands even when it’s a rumour.
According to SCRB data, nearly 75 per cent of missing children in State were girls. A high of around 4,500 missing girl children were yet to be traced out. However, data further shows that when missing children from age-group 14-17 years were around 60-65 per cent, nearly one-third missing children were of the age-group of around 10 years, which is a cause of concern as people suspect it to be the handiwork of child-lifters gang and therefore the panic reaction in public.
District-wise analysis reveals that the districts like Ganjam, Rayagada, Baleswar, Bhadrak, Nayagarh and Mayubhanj that were being featured along with Keonjhar, Sundergarh, Sambalpur and Angul among the top-10 districts with maximum missing children cases.
Coincidentally, exactly these are the districts that saw eruption of street violence or mob lynching of ‘alleged’ child-lifters recently.
Not only Odisha, Telengana too witnessed such mob-policing incidents against alleged ‘child-lifters’ and strange similarity between Odisha and Telengana is tracing out rate of missing children of both the States is below 25 per cent last year (2017-18). Among the neighbourhood (Odisha, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand), Odisha and Jharkhand have a poor tracing out rate vis-a-vis of over 80 per cent in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
However, as per data available with the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD), Odisha stood 3rd in missing children numbers in the neighbourhood region after West Bengal and Chhattisgarh.
Significantly, the State Crime Branch under operation ‘Muskan’ traced out nearly 2,000 children in 2015-17. However, new missing cases plus decade-old backlogs come to haunt the State police as that resulted in a low tracing out rate. Moreover, missing children cases in the State have risen again after 2014.
But the SCRB data analysis reveals a fall in average cases as when average missing cases were around 2,500 in 2009 – 2013, the average was around 1,700 in 2014-17.