“The police have specifically disputed the figure of 304 children described as untraced between 2020 and 2024. That number was arrived at by adding the annual pending figures of 41, 47, 68, 61 and 87. But a child who appears on a pending list in one year and is traced the following year would effectively be counted again if these figures are added together.
The police are right on this point.
But the larger concern remains. Missing children are not accounting figures. Behind every case is a family waiting for its child to return.
Therefore, the government must provide a clear annual picture showing how many children went missing, how many were traced, how many cases were carried forward, and exactly how many remained pending at the end of each year.”
Goa Police has clarified that recent reports suggesting hundreds of children remain untraced were based on an incorrect aggregation of year-wise figures. The clarification is important, but it also raises a more fundamental question: why is crime data being presented in a way that leaves room for such confusion?
According to the police, 183 children were reported missing between 2016 and 2024, while 186 were traced. The department says the tracing figure includes children whose cases were pending from earlier years. The cumulative pending cases, therefore, fell from 31 at the beginning of 2016 to 28 at the end of 2024.
This is significantly different from simply adding the pending figures of every year.
The police have specifically disputed the figure of 304 children described as untraced between 2020 and 2024. That number was arrived at by adding the annual pending figures of 41, 47, 68, 61 and 87. But a child who appears on a pending list in one year and is traced the following year would effectively be counted again if these figures are added together.
The police are right on this point.
But the larger concern remains. Missing children are not accounting figures. Behind every case is a family waiting for its child to return.
Therefore, the government must provide a clear annual picture showing how many children went missing, how many were traced, how many cases were carried forward, and exactly how many remained pending at the end of each year.
Another issue deserves attention. Goa Police itself has questioned the reported cumulative figure of 591 kidnapping and abduction cases between 2020 and 2024, pointing out that the annual figures cited do not appear to support that calculation.
Such discrepancies should not be left for the public or journalists to decode.
The police deserve credit for issuing a clarification. But transparency should begin when the data is released, not after a controversy emerges.
The media also has a responsibility to verify how figures are calculated before presenting them. At the same time, government departments must understand that raw statistics without context can easily create misleading conclusions.
The real issue is therefore not whether Goa has 28 missing children or 304. The real issue is whether the public has access to accurate, clearly explained and regularly updated information.
Every missing child deserves the same urgency, whether the case is one day old or several decades old.
Goa Police says it continues to pursue both recent and long-pending cases. The public now deserves to know how effectively those efforts are progressing.
If the numbers are difficult to understand, shouldn’t the government make the data easier to understand?
