– Mohammed Atherulla Shariff
Bengaluru, March 28: The motive behind keeping the records of crimes, compiling and publishing is described as to help the planners and administrators of Criminal Justice system in devising further Crime control strategies and in taking appropriate preventive remedial measures.
Crimes in Karnataka, published by the police department every year is the only source of official statistics on crime in all its dimensions and analyses. It serves the ever-increasing need for a reference manual on all matters related to crime for police managers, social organizations, journalists, columnists, planners, administrators, lawmakers and researchers working on crime-related subjects. Police officers of all ranks can make use of the information for better and more effective policing.
Hair-raising
The data published by 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.
Police records show the number of missing people has been constantly on the rise in Bengaluru. According to reports, at least 6,017 people went missing from the city in 2023.
What’s more alarming is that the number of women or girls outnumbers men in missing cases reported in the state capital for the past several years.
Complex reasons
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 are more sensitive. A woman police official who often holds counselling for people, including minors, after they are found, said, “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.”
Decline in caring and sharing
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, missing victims end up committing suicide and the ones kidnapped get murdered.
With advanced technology, tracking a missing person has become easier. Once a missing case is reported, the police alert city and state police, sharing 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) website 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 were 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.
Issue is larger
February 3 is observed as National Missing Persons Day in India and August 30 as International Day of the victims of ‘Enforced Disappearances’ which are least attempts to raise the conscience of society.
It’s not a mere matter of criminology, but sociology too. Socialisation and commodification of women, and its manifestation in films, literature and digital platforms at a time when moral shock-absorbers of the society are becoming weak day by day, is a cause of concern. Policymakers, religious scholars, educationists and other stakeholders need to have threadbare discussions and tackle the menace on a war footing basis, though a lot of water has already flown under the bridge.
