2,444 missing minors were rescued from the state and outside under the campaign last month.
Under a campaign to rescue missing and abducted girls, the Madhya Pradesh police have rescued 2,444 minors in January. According to a police official, a total of 3,122 cases of missing and abducted girls remained pending at the end of the last month.
"Operation Muskan' was carried out in January in which 2,444 missing and abducted girls were rescued from Madhya Pradesh and outside the state," the official from the MP police headquarters here said.
Out of those rescued, 175 minors belonged to Indore, 144 from Sagar, 115 from Dhar, 107 from Rewa, and 102 girls from Chhatarpur in Madhya Pradesh; he further added.
Under the operation, about 82 per cent of the missing girls were found in MP and the remaining were traced to several other states.
According to the official, 141 girls were rescued from Punjab, eight from Telangana, six from Kerala, five from Jammu and Kashmir, four from West Bengal, three each from Karnataka and the Union Territory of Daman, and one from Assam. Some of the girls were also traced in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan, he said.
The progress of proceedings in each case of kidnapping is reviewed every three days, the official added.
In a meeting last month, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan instructed the officials concerned to inform parents of the abducted children about the progress and status of the investigation into such cases.
Chouhan had said parents of abducted children will get an 'Adhikar Patra' (authority letter), containing information about the action taken by police towards tracing the child.
The chief minister also said that various crimes against women have come down by 15 to 50 percent in Madhya Pradesh since March 2020. Last year, a total of 3,337 kidnapped and missing minor girls were rescued in three different campaigns in the state, the police officer said.
Inputs from PTI