A visitor to Odisha’s Lulkidihi village in Sundargarh district, will see their phone light up with BSNL’s welcome messages from Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand. But before the one-nation-one-number plan was implemented in 2015, the now 60-year-old Victor Minz would cross State borders countless times, from this village bordering the other two States, to access cheaper rates and better phone networks, just to make anxious calls to New Delhi and Mumbai. He was desperately looking for his second daughter, Rati (name changed to protect privacy), then about 16. Two decades since Rati left for New Delhi to work as a house-help, Mr. Minz wonders if he will ever know what befell her. The police complaints led nowhere.
The Crime in India 2022 report, released by the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), says 1,120 persons were trafficked from Odisha in 2022, the highest in the country. Though with 1,816 person rescued, the State also has the highest number of human trafficked victims rescued in 2022. But as of December 2022, as many as 7,565 children under 18 continue to be missing. Odisha ranks sixth in the table of missing persons, with 41,759 people still not traced.
