Bhopal:

Madhya Pradesh police have rescued 2,444 minor girls last month under a campaign to trace missing and kidnapped girls, an official said today.

A total of 3,122 cases of missing and kidnapped girls were pending at the end of the last month, he said.

“‘Operation Muskan’ was carried out in January in which 2,444 missing and kidnapped girls were rescued from Madhya Pradesh and outside the state,” the official from the Madhya Pradesh police headquarters in Bhopal said.

Those rescued included 175 minors from Indore, 144 from Sagar, 115 from Dhar, 107 from Rewa and 102 girls from Chhatarpur in Madhya Pradesh, he told news agency Press Trust of India.

Under the campaign, about 82 per cent of the missing or kidnapped girls were found in Madhya Pradesh and the remaining were traced to various other states.

According to the official, 141 girls were rescued from Punjab, eight from Telangana, six from Kerala, five from Jammu and Kashmir, four from West Bengal, three each from Karnataka and the Union Territory of Daman, and one from Assam.

Some of the girls were also found in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, he said.

The progress of proceedings in each case of kidnapping is reviewed every three days, the official added.

In a meeting last month, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan instructed the officials concerned to inform parents of the kidnapped children about the progress and status of investigation into such cases.

Mr Chouhan had said parents of kidnapped children will get an ‘Adhikar Patra’ (authority letter), containing information about the action taken by police towards tracing the child.

The Chief Minister also said that various crimes against women have come down by 15 to 50 per cent in Madhya Pradesh since March 2020.

Last year, a total of 3,337 kidnapped and missing minor girls were rescued in three different campaigns in the state, the police official said.
 

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