On July 30, India, along with the rest of the world, marked the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. The theme for 2023 was ‘Reach Every Victim of Trafficking, Leave No One Behind’. Ironically, just four days earlier, the government stated in Parliament that, according to data compiled by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), a total of 1,313,078 girls below the age of 18 and women have gone missing between 2019 and 2021.

It’s not clear, though, how many of these 1.3 million missing girls and women are victims of human trafficking. The latest crime data records show a far lower number of girls and women being trafficked over the past five years. This gap in data makes it virtually impossible to map the magnitude of the problem.

On July 31, the Indian Express reported: “According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) website, 82,619 girls went missing in 2019 and 49,436 were recovered. In the same year, 3,29,504 women went missing, and 1,68,793 were recovered. In 2020, 79,233 girls and 3,44,422 women went missing. Of these, 2,24,043 women were recovered while the number of girls recovered in 2019 was not given. In 2021, 90,113 girls went missing and 58,980 were recovered; 3,75,058 women went missing and 2,02,298 were recovered.”