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New Delhi, August 16, 2023

The Home Ministry has said in this report that 10,61,648 of the missing women are above eighteen years of age, but 2,51,430 girls below eighteen are also missing.

Dr. Salim Khan, Mumbai

If someone asked the Bhakts of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, what the Modi government had done for the plight of women in the country the answer would be bringing the Uniform Civil Code. But currently that law has vanished from public discourse and a very worrying report has been presented by Amit Shah's Home Ministry in the just ended monsoon session of the House regarding women going missing in the country.  

According to this report the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), which records the crimes in the country, has revealed that in three years from 2019  to 2021 , more than 13.13 lakh girls and women have gone missing from the country.

Had this report been presented by any foreign organization, it would have been rejected as part of a conspiracy of treason. They would be accused of interfering in the internal affairs of the country. Had any local NGO dared to publish such a report, it would have been raided by the ED and accused of being an agent of foreigners, would have been declared a traitor, but since this is a revelation of Amit Shah's Home Ministry, Modi Bhakts don’t know where to hide.

The Home Ministry has said in this report that 10,61,648 of the missing women are above eighteen years of age, but 2,51,430 girls below the age of eighteen are also missing.

It is obvious that these government figures are only peripheral and show cases where the FIR has been officially lodged. Otherwise, most of the people do not approach the police station at all. The most basic reason for this is the stigma. People do not want such matters to come out in public. Nowadays, if a case reaches the police station, a reporter with a mobile phone reaches the place and prepares a video by asking some questions to the complainant, some from his relatives and the police. If the girl is a Hindu, then he gets the reaction of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad to shout 'Love Jihad' and if she is a Muslim, he gets a sermon from some cleric. In this way, his channel gets several thousand, rather lakhs of viewers whereas that family does not know where to hide its face.

There are many other reasons for not writing a complaint. One, the police is not ready to write the report without bribe. That's why the poor families of the victimized women feel so helpless in independent India. Caste also becomes a huge obstacle. If the police station officer and the accused belong to the same society, he does not allow the complainant to write a complaint through persuasion, scolding or threatening. The public also does not expect any concrete initiative from the police. That's why people do not go to the police station with complaints and as a result, most of such women are lost forever.

Remember what happened when the mother of girl went to the Nithari Police Station in NOIDA to complain aboiut her missing daughter.

She was thrown out of the police station by the SHO telling her,”Bhag Gayee hogi apne yaar ke saath.”

According to Kamal Nath, only 10 percent of the victimized women make a complaint, the remaining 90 percent do not come forward even after so much harassment. Despite all these difficulties, the registration of complaints in such a large number highlights the seriousness of the dreadful situation.

The BJP cannot shirk its responsibility by blaming the state governments of the opposing parties in this matter, because Madhya Pradesh is at the top of the missing women list, where there has been a double engine government except for a few months in the last fifteen years. According to government statistics, twelve percent i.e. 1,60,180 women have gone missing from Madhya Pradesh. 38,234 of the women who went missing from the BJP-ruled state during the last three years were below 18 years of age. Madhya Pradesh is very close to Nagpur, the headquarter of RSS. West Bengal is at number two under the rule of Trinamool Congress. Wherein the number of women missing were 1,56,905 and girls below the age of eighteen were 36,606. Ironically, there is a very firebrand woman chief minister who can defeat Modi and Shah in the elections, but fails to protect women.

Presently, a tribal Ms. Draupadi Murmu is the President of the country. In her native state of Odisha, 70,222 women and 16,649 girls are reported missing. Prior to becoming President, she was governor of the tribal-dominated state of Chhattisgarh, which has also reported 48,116 missing women and 10,817 girls. Well, this is an economically poor state, but even in the economically better state of Maharashtra, 1,87,409 women and 13,033 girls below the age of eighteen have gone missing. In a sparsely populated state like Jammu and Kashmir, 8,765 women went missing between 2019 and 2021, of which 1,148 were girls below the age of eighteen.

Delhi ranks first among the areas under Union Territories where 61,054 women and 22,919 girls below the age of eighteen years went missing during the said period. Before coming to power, Modi had given a slogan in Nirbhaya's case that 'Enough of women sufferings now vote for Modi government'. But these government figures totally expose this slogan.

According to Ajay Kumar Mishra, Minister of State in the Union Home Ministry, the law enacted by the government in 2013 for the safety of women and to prevent sexual crimes against them was amended in 2018 and made more stringent and effective. But this report proves that paper laws are useless if they are not implemented strictly.

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