Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh government has rebutted the allegation of Jana Sena chief Pawan Kalyan that large numbers of girls and women from AP were missing.
It also rejected Pawan Kalyan’s allegation that some of them were lured into human trafficking by misusing the information families gave to the volunteers.
The government clarified that out of 2,705 missing persons in AP from 2019 to 2023, nearly 500 women were later located within the state.
In a public meeting held at Eluru on July 9, as part of the phase-2 poll campaign on the Varahi in phase-II, Pawan Kalyan had said 30,000 girls and women went missing from AP since 2019-20 and only 14,000 of them could be traced.
According to Pawan Kalyan, he got the information from central intelligence. He said some volunteers had been passing on sensitive information about lonely women, widows etc to anti-social elements who, in turn, used these girls and women for human trafficking.
This led to a widespread hue and cry from the volunteers. They staged a state-wide protest and demanded that Pawan Kalyan tender an apology.
In this backdrop, the state government came up with data on missing girls and women.
It said out of 26,099 persons missing since 2019, as many as 23,394 were traced while 2,705 remained untraced until Dec. 31, 2021. However, in 2022-23, out of 2,705 persons missing, 500 were found, which meant the missing persons were only 2,205 so far, the government claimed.
The government maintained that no case was booked in any police station against even a single volunteer on charges of human trafficking. It was unacceptable to level baseless accusations against the volunteers, the government said.
They government expressed concern by saying that such remarks by Pawan Kalyan would cause unrest in the state and might even lead to a breach of peace and security besides tarnishing the image of volunteers.
The authorities said the data of the National Crime Records Bureau was misinterpreted, given the fact that from 2014 to 2019, there were a lot of incidents of 'missing women'. Not all cases of 'missing' can be taken as human trafficking. Some cases were altered under IPC sections while some cases were closed after tracing the missing persons.
Some cases were booked under sections of Posco Act when girls under 19 years of age left home with their lovers, and some cases were of human trafficking under provisions of Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, it said.
