Official data must distinguish between women who have been abducted and those who have eloped of their free will.
The new season of the Netflix series Delhi Crime explores the issue of missing women who have been trafficked. The series draws attention to the very real problem of women being trapped under the guise of being offered jobs and then sold to clients.
However, many viewers do not realise that the official data fail to specifically recognise a significant category of women who are classified as missing: those whose whereabouts may not be known because they have eloped to get married to partners of their choice.
If their families do not approve of these unions, they often register a missing person’s complaint.
As a consequence, the law labels women who have eloped as victims even though they are actually autonomous individuals.
That is evident from the National Crimes Records Bureau data for 2023. It shows that 113,564 women were abducted and kidnapped but does not list how many women have been classified as missing because they have eloped.
In researcher Neetika Vishwanath’s 2018 study on fast track courts and 15 police stations in Lucknow, she found that in most cases where a woman elopes, an FIR of kidnapping and abduction is lodged against the man.
Vishwanath points out that it is not the consent of the girl that matters, but rather that of her parents, who attempt to prove that she was a minor eloping for marriage.
Historian Uma Chakravarti, in her work, “From fathers to husbands: of love, death and marriage in North India” notes that women who elope for inter-caste marriages are seen as violating social and familial codes of honour or izzat.
