Mumbai: PIL Filed In Bombay High Court Seeks State Action To Trace Over 1 Lakh Missing Women From 2019-2021

Mumbai: A public interest litigation (PIL) petition has been filed in the Bombay High Court seeking direction to the State government to trace over one lakh missing women who disappeared between 2019 and 2021. The PIL filed by a former Army soldier from Sangli highlights that “alarming” numbers of girls / women have gone missing from the state and the police “wash off their hands” after they turn major.

Petitioner Sahaji Jagtap’s daughter, who was studying in the third year of her Bachelor of Science course from Sangli, went missing in December 2021. He registered a case with the Sanjay Nagar police station in Sangli, but the police were unable to trace her. He was later informed that she had converted to Islam and married. His plea states that he was able to meet his daughter for barely two minutes at the police station on December 15, 2021. Till date, he said, he is unable to find out what led her to break all ties with the family.

Since his daughter became a major, the police made no effort to bring her home, his plea claims. It adds that although he understands that his daughter wants to lead her life in the way that she deems fit, but his family has gone through a lot of trauma in the last few years while looking for her.

Jagtap, who now works with the government treasury department, has said that it is while searching for his daughter, he came across data from the Ministry of Home Affairs that highlights that women above the age of 18 in Maharashtra have remained untraced for years. As per the data, in 2019, there were 35,990 women who were not traceable. In 2020 and 2021, the number was 30,089, and 34,763 respectively. Tis totals to 1,00,842 from 2019 to 2021.

The statistics of the girls and women missing from the State of Maharashtra is alarming and the numbers are increasing year by year. “Though the Respondents claim to have created a mechanism to deal with the issue, the steady and shocking increase in the numbers is itself a sign of the failure of the said mechanisms,” the plea contended.

The Supreme Court, in 2002, had issued a series of directions to be followed by the police while handling cases of missing girls / women, which included publicising their photographs. Though such directions issued by the Supreme Court are binding, “none of these guidelines were followed when the petitioner approached teh local police, the plea added. “The respondents are taking the issue very casually, carelessly and in a negligent way,” the plea underlined.

The petition prays that the Director General of Police and the State Women and Child Welfare Department fulfil their statutory obligations to detect the missing girls/ women as well as set up an effective mechanism that would positively and aggressively address the issue. The petition has also sought continuous monitoring of the investigation by the court.

The PIL is likely to come up for hearing before a bench of Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya and Justice Amit Borkar pon July 30.

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