Police in Odisha’s Cuttack district in a joint operation with Investigative Units on Crime Against Women (IUCAW) managed to track down 306 ‘missing’ women and children and reunite the missing individuals with their distraught families after a five-day long intense search, an official said on Saturday.
Though the exercise for tracing missing women and children goes on round the year, it was intensified from 18 to 22 August in a special drive and it paid rich dividends with the tracing of over 300 women and children missing for quite a long while, said the official.
This strenuous effort bore results with active coordination between various police stations across the district. Field visits, verification drives, and the use of technology played a vital role in the identification and recovery process.
The success of the special drive reflects the continued commitment of Cuttack Police towards the safety and well-being of women and children. Further efforts will be made to prevent such cases and ensure timely tracing in future incidents, added the police officials.
During the five-day operation, 306 missing persons were successfully traced and reunited with their families. The traced individuals included 282 women and 24 children.
This operation resulted in the resolution of several long-pending and sensitive cases, reaffirming the commitment of the police to safeguard vulnerable sections of society and ensuring timely action in missing person cases.
Citing an instance of tracing missing individuals, the official said a woman under Kishannagar Police Station jurisdiction of Cuttack district had been reported missing in 2016. After nine years, she was rescued on 20 August from Puri District, during the drive.
Similarly a minor girl (16), who had gone missing from the Banki area in 2021, was rescued on 19 August and was safely reunited with her family, added the official.
As many as 36,420 women and 8,403 children were missing in Odisha over the past five years while 421 women were trafficked to other states through middlemen, leading to the arrest of 453 people, Chief Minister Mohan Majhi had informed the State Assembly earlier in February last.