2,417 missing women, kids traced, reunited with their families in a five-day operation

 Bhubaneswar, Sep 1 (UNI) The Odisha police in a joint operation with Investigative Units on Crime Against Women (IUCAW) managed to track down as many as 2,417 ‘missing’ women and children and reunite the missing individuals with their distraught families after a five-day long intense search, an official said today.

During the Operation termed as ‘Anweshan’, 358 missing children with 325 of them minor girls and 2,059 missing women have been traced and rescued, added the official.

Though the exercise for tracing missing women and children goes on round the year, it was intensified from 18 to 22 August in a special drive and it paid rich dividends with the tracing of women and children missing for quite a long while, observed the official.
Field visits, verification drives, and the use of technology played a vital role in the identification and recovery process.

This operation resulted in the resolution of several long-pending and
sensitive cases, reaffirming the commitment of the police to safeguard vulnerable sections of society and ensuring timely action in missing person cases.
Puri District performed the best by tracing and rescuing 45 children and 504 women followed by Bhadrak district which rescued and traced 37 Children and 318 women. Cuttack district rescued and traced 21 Children and 304 women during the operation.

In the year 2025, apart from ‘Operation Anweshan’, separate special drives for tracing women and children were conducted in the months of February, April, and May. It resulted in the tracking down of 1,209 missing children including 1,078 minor girls and 6,667 women.

As many as 36,420 women and 8,403 children were missing in Odisha over the past five years while 421 women were trafficked to other states through middlemen, leading to the arrest of 453 people, Chief Minister Mohan Majhi had informed the State Assembly earlier in February last.