The State of West Bengal, ruled by the incumbent Trinamool Congress government, has witnessed more cases of missing children that any other State in the country.
As per reports, the Minister of Women and Child Welfare, Smriti Irani had informed in the Lok Sabha that West Bengal topped the list of missing children in India consecutively from 2016 to 2018. As per the data, around 16,881 children went missing in 2016 from different parts of the State while 19,671 children went missing in 2017. In the following year, about 16,027 children went missing from West Bengal.
Earlier, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) also revealed the grim picture of such cases in the State. One out of 6 such cases come from West Bengal. As per the NCRB report (2017), there were 1,19,013 missing children in India and West Bengal accounted for 16.5% of the total cases. Similarly, the State accounted for 15.1% of all 1,11,569 cases in the country.
According to the reports of Ministry of Women and Child Development 52,579 children of Bengal are missing!
— BJP Bengal (@BJP4Bengal) February 2, 2021
West Bengal tops the ‘unfortunate’ list, 3 years in a row now!
Pishi, will you put this information in your report card? Aren’t you ashamed? https://t.co/oAhl2pNatF
Human trafficking in West Bengal
West Bengal also ranked 2nd in human trafficking in 2017, with 357 cases. It is important to note that a total of 2,857 cases were recorded in the same year. But, the data from 2016 reveals that West Bengal accounted for a whopping 3579 cases (44%) of human trafficking in the country, which recorded a total of 8,132 cases.
Shakti Vahini member Rishi Kant, however, noted, “While the efforts of the State in tracing missing children is commendable. We have to look at the cases of human trafficking in accordance with the data of missing children. Looking only at the data of the NCRB on human trafficking may not give a clear picture”
