'Laapata Ladies': 39 Women Went Missing Every Day in India Between 2017 & 2022, 13 From Odisha

As per data from ‘Crime In India’, an annual report by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a total of 70,549 women, including minors, have been added in the ‘missing persons’ list and remain untraced.

The data analysed by News18 also shows that the jump in the missing women was higher in adults. Of the 70,549 women that went missing between 2017 and 2022, 67,476 were above the age of 18 years while 3,073 were minors. At the end of 2017, as per that year’s report, 1.29 lakh adult women were missing, which increased to 1.97 lakh in 2022. The number of minor girls went up from 30,725 to 33,798 during the same period.

The analysis also showed that this jump is steady and each year, between 2017 and 2022, the number kept increasing consistently. In total, 14.41 lakh women, including minors, went missing between 2017 and 2022 while 13.84 lakh were traced back.

In Odisha, at least 24,715 women and girls have gone missing in the period and are untraced. As per the 2017 report, the number of women who went missing and are untraced in Odisha was 2,668 that increased by more than 10 times to 27,383 by 2022.

Madhya Pradesh, with an additional 10,162 missing women, stood at the second position. The total missing women who are untraced in Madhya Pradesh have gone up from 25,597 in 2017 to 35,759 in 2022. The state also stood second in terms of total missing women. West Bengal held the first position in 2017 and 2022 in terms of total number of missing women — 33,083 in 2017 and 38,848 in 2022.

On the other hand, Maharashtra has seen improvement in numbers. In 2017, the total missing women in the state were 27,949 that came down to 23,342 in 2022. Maharashtra in 2017 had the second-highest number of missing women but the position improved to fourth in 2022. In Telangana also, the numbers have dropped from 3,031 to 1,653. As of 2022, Odisha had the third-highest number of missing women who are untraced.

The NCRB compiles the data it received from states and UTs across India. The latest report about the 2022 data, published in December 2023, says that 3.83 lakh people are missing in the country, including 1.52 lakh men and 21 transgenders. Women, including minors, account for a major share of this list. As per the 2017 report, the total missing persons in the country were 2.97 lakh, including 1.37 lakh men and 163 transgenders.