Bhopal: According to the National Crime Records Bureau report, 99,119 women went missing in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh during the three years from 2019 to 2021. Also, 25,209 minors went missing during this period. The police have not been able to trace 2,830 of these girls so far.
Of the 99,119 missing women, 47 per cent or 36,000 women, are yet to be found. It is indicated that more than half of the people have been smuggled out of the state. Pooja Marwaha, CEO of Child Rights and You (CRY), said it is very disturbing that children are going missing and cannot be brought back.
Madhya Pradesh is the state that gave a tax break to 'The Kerala Story', a hate film that promotes the smuggling of women out of the country.
But in Kerala, during the same period, a total of 24,258 missing cases, including 2,837 girls, were reported, and more than 90 per cent of them have been found and brought back. According to the National Crime Records Bureau report, 366 women and 32 minor children are to be found in Kerala in 2021.
The Madhya Pradesh government, which initially gave tax exemption for the controversial film 'The Kerala Story' for a month, withdrew it within five days. But after controversy erupted, the state government reinstated the same.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan said that the film shows how the lives of daughters are ruined by falling into the trap of love jihad. The government already enacted laws against forced conversions, he said.
The film creates awareness about this issue, and girls and their parents should watch the movie. That is why the Madhya Pradesh government is declaring the film tax-free, he said. However, he has not yet commented on the missing 100,000 women and over 25,000 children from his own state.
The National Crime Records Bureau has released a report that 40,000 women have gone missing in five years in Gujarat, another BJP-ruled state. According to NCRB data, 7,105 women went missing in 2016, 7,712 in 2017, 9,246 in 2018 and 9,268 in 2019. Also, 8,290 women went missing in 2020. The total number stands at 41,621.
In 2021, according to the government's report in the Legislative Assembly, 4722 women were reported missing in Ahmedabad and Vadodara in 2019-20.
Sudhir Sinha, a former IPS officer and member of the Gujarat State Human Rights Commission, says that many of the missing women are being transported to other states for forced sex. He said that the problem with the police system is that the cases of missing persons are not taken seriously. Such cases are more serious than murder. Because when a child goes missing, parents wait for their child for years when a missing person case should be investigated as rigorously as a murder case, he said.
Gujarat Congress spokesperson Hiren Banker said that while the BJP is talking about women in Kerala, it is not talking about the more than 40,000 missing women in Gujarat. He also reminded the BJP leaders that Gujarat is the home of the country's Prime Minister and Home Minister. During the election campaign in Karnataka, the Prime Minister himself had come forward in support of the film 'The Kerala Story', which spreads false propaganda about Kerala.