THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state police have reconstituted two state-level police teams with the aim of tracing missing people in the state. Railway police superintendent Merin Joseph will head the investigation team probing the missing cases of women and girls in the state.
In his order, State Police Chief Loknath Behera also entrusted Kasargod SP A Srinivas as the head of the team probing the missing cases of men and boys. Behera also authorized the probe teams to include suitable officers according to their wish. The two teams will be under the supervision of ADGP (Headquarters) and special cell police superintendent.
Earlier, the DGP had said as many as 3,069 persons, who had gone missing, were traced since January. As per official statistics, 3,416 persons went missing since January. Of the 2,068 women who vanished, 1,967 were tracked down.
According to the statistics available with the State Crime Records Bureau, 504 children were abducted or kidnapped in the state in the last three years, most of them in the 13-18 age group. As per the data, 1,774 children went missing in 2017, and of them, 1725 were rescued by the police while 49 could not be traced. In the last five years, over 7,285 children went missing in the state. The recovery rate has been consistently high. Between 2011 and 2018, the police said they have not been able to trace 168 missing children.
As per records from the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the tracking system for missing and vulnerable children ‘track the missing child’ that works under the aegis of the Ministry of Women and Child Development, 867 children were reported missing and 567 tracked in the August 2016-July 2017 period. The number of children trafficked in the state was only one in 2014, 75 in 2015 and 83 in 2016.