Mumbai Police rescued nearly 99% of minor girls who were reported missing or kidnapped by their family or guardians from 2018 to 2023. At times cops may take 30 minutes or 30 hours, but they always did their best to save them all.
From 2018 to 2023, the Mumbai Police's high detection rates spared many families suffering, whether it was a three-year-old girl from Wadala who was found within 26 minutes of her parents reporting her missing or a five-year-old who was rescued within 48 hours of being abducted by a man her mother had spurned.
From 2018 to 2023, 6,735 girls under 18 years of age, went missing or were kidnapped. Their parents or guardians reported the issue to the police. Police traced and rescued 6,649 girls and reunited them with their families.
Out of the five administrative regions overseen by the Mumbai Police, the south has the highest detection rate at 99.1%, having successfully located and reunited 336 of the 339 missing female adolescents with their families.
The north region starts from Goregaon and ends at Dahisar. The wider north region has the lowest deduction rate. 1,939 girls went missing from this region and 1,900 girls were reunited with their families by the police. 39 girls are yet to be traced.
There were two zones with 100% detection. One in the west and one in the south. The 75 cases of missing or kidnapped girls that were reported to the Port Zone, which comes under the south region, were all solved by the cops. Comparably, zone 8 in the west, which covers BKC, Kherwadi, and Santacruz east saw 100% discovery since all 358 females who went missing or were abducted were found during the course of the previous five years.
The missing female kids garnered attention even in impoverished areas where crime rates are generally higher. Consider zone 6, which contains large slum areas and runs from Chembur to Govandi and Mankhurd. Its detection rate was 98%. 1,141 girls were found out of the 1,164 missing minors.
Satya Narayan Choudhary, joint commissioner of police (Law and Order), attributes this achievement to meticulous police work. He noted that special efforts to locate missing girls and women have been demanded of all 93 police stations in the city. He further stated that these cases will receive special attention. The police stations strictly adhere to the standard operating procedure (SOP) that was published by the Ministry of Women and Child Development in 2016.
Choudhary added that to maintain continuity, zonal deputy commissioners are asked to take weekly reviews.
The court guidelines and efforts of social activists help a lot in the policing process. To begin the process, police have to file a first information report (FIR) for the trafficking or kidnapping of the missing minors.
The standard operating procedure (SOP) of the Women and Child Welfare Ministry stipulates that a proforma for gathering information must be used, that CCTV footage from all transit routes must be checked, and that police must notify other local and federal agencies so that the missing child's information can be posted.
Police investigation of all these cases have been done and it was revealed that children run away from home following fights with parents over not prioritizing academics or excessive phone usage, wanting to escape poverty, desire to act in movies, and love relationships among other reasons.
In a few cases, police also learned about minor girls leaving their homes to meet someone they connected with on social media platforms. In many cases, the girls were trapped by false marriage promises made by other people or in fake job scams.
A senior police official said that if law enforcement officials do not locate them right away, there is a greater chance that they will be sexually exploited or enticed into the network of human trafficking. The majority of these girls are younger than eighteen. For these young ladies, counseling is strongly recommended.
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