Kashinagar: Even as the state is yet to come to terms with kidnappings and deaths of Pari and Swati in Nayagarh and Bishnupriya’s death in Balasore, report of alleged abduction of an eightyear-old boy from Gajapati district has come to the fore, Thursday.
The boy, identified as Jami Hardhik, 7, son of a cashew trader Jami Gopi, was last seen playing with his friends at Morning Sahi near the crowded bus stand area in Kashinagar NAC Wednesday evening.
According to his friends, two unidentified bike-borne miscreants reached the spot and took Hardhik away with them. While Hardhik was playing with his friends in the locality, the miscreants approached them and called Hardhik by his name. They asked Hardhik the address of his father’s workplace. In response, Hardhik said that his father will be in the cashew factory following which they took him with them on their bike. Just when his friends had realised something was wrong, they gave a chase. But it was too late as the miscreants had already crossed the village limits by then.
While the reason behind Hardhik’s abduction is yet to be known, after coming to know about the incident from his friends his family members searched for him at all possible locations but in vain. Later, they lodged a report with Kashinagar police station. Kashinagar police registered a case and started an investigation by launching a manhunt to trace whereabouts of the boy, police IIC Susant Kumar Sahu said.
Gajapati SP Tapan Kumar Patnaik and SDPO Ramakrushna Pati also visited Kashinagar Thursday and took stock of the situation. Police stations in Paralakhemundi and Gunupur in the state and Kataru, Batili and Purunapatnam in adjoining Andhra Pradesh have been informed about the incident and asked to track the whereabouts of the missing child. Four separate teams have launched search operations, while the CCTV footages of the cashew factory are being scanned, the SP said.
It is worth mentioning here that in July this year, Pari, a 5-year-old girl in Nayagarh district, went missing while playing outside her house. Later, she was found dead. The murder of Pari grabbed public attention following the self-immolation bid by her parents before the Assembly building. The Opposition parties had subsequently tried to corner the state government by pressing for immediate expulsion of Minister Arun Sahoo for his alleged complicity in the case. Later, the Odisha government ordered an investigation into the case by Special Investigation Team (SIT) led by senior IPS officer Arun Bothra.
Meanwhile, another girl from Nayagarh district went missing soon after Pari’s kidnapping and death. As per reports, the three-year-old girl was last seen playing near her house at Dadhipatna village under Ranpur block in the district last Friday. Though the parents of the girl launched a search operation, they failed to trace her. Following the incident, a massive search operation was been launched by local police and personnel of Odisha fire services department to trace the missing girl.
What is worrying is that the number of such cases filed at various police stations in the state spiraled by around 75 per cent between 2015 and 2019. The reports suggest that as many as 1,807 missing cases reported in 2015 rose to 3,151 till the end of 2019. However, the police failed to achieve success in tracing the children who went missing from 2015 to 2019, with 2017 as an aberration. In 2015, the state police was tasked with a target to trace out 4,588 missing children, including 2,781 untraced children of previous years. But, the police managed to find out only 698 kids. As many as 1,901 children went missing in 2016. The police succeeded in tracing out only 589 minors in 2016 out of a total of 5,791 cases. That also included untraced 3,890 from the previous years. The tracing rate was a mere 10.1 per cent.
PNN