Lost and never found: Alarming rise in number of missing women in B'luru

Hameed Ashraf | NT

Bengaluru: The number of missing people has been constantly on the rise in Bengaluru.

According to reports, at least 6,017 people went missing from Bengaluru in 2023.

What's more alarming is that the number of women or girls outnumber men in missing cases reported in the state capital for the past several years.

The data procured by News Trail from the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB) shows that in 2021, at least 4,205 people went missing while in 2022 the number rose to 4,854.

In total 15,076 people went missing in the last three years of which 8,338 were women while 566 were teenage girls.

Senior officials from Bengaluru Police Department explained that most of the cases involved elopement with strangers, whereas a few cases were related to kidnapping.

Other reasons include domestic dispute, abuse, peer pressure, financial stress or falling into debt traps.

Women and girls more sensitive A woman police official from Pulikeshi Nagar who often holds counselling for people including minors after they are found, said that "Girls are more sensitive when it comes to matters like academics and grow anxious over poor performance or getting depressed at work. Normally, they discuss such issues with their mothers, sisters or caretakers," she said.

However, about depressed school girls, she pointed out that most mothers, nowadays, will be working professionals due to which there will be a communication gap in the family.

“At such times, the girls start feeling lonely. They are also disturbed by a feeling of guilt and end up running away," she said.

If anyone goes missing from their house, the family members first inquire with their neighbors, relatives and friends, before searching at the possible locations and then approach the police for help.

Unfortunately in a few cases, until the police complete the probe to locate them, the missing victims end up committing suicide and the ones kidnapped get murdered.

With advanced tech, tracking a missing person has become easier Once a missing case is reported, the police alerts the city and the state police and shares the details of the missing person.

The personnel monitor bus stations, railway stations and other important places while a team scans the CCTV cameras installed at those places.

While the police have made a few websites available for the public to look for missing people or unidentified remains, the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network & Systems (CCTNS) system website of the police provides more possibilities.

Gender, age group, height range, the date the individual went missing, complexion, other visible identification markings, and the colour of the missing person’s last seen clothing are some of the search capabilities on the website.

However despite all of this, there are chances of failure in investigation. In the last three years, 330 women and 17 girls are still missing without a clue from the city, the reports said.

It is very difficult to ascertain how the missing women or girls could have avoided the vicious web of trafficking, violence, drug addiction, prostitution, begging and other risks of exploitation and involvement in crime.