New Delhi: Well over 16,000 women and girls went missing in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) between 2019 and 2026, of whom 4,271 are still untraced, says a report in the Tribune. The newspaper accessed the figures through a Right to Information (RTI) request. The report does not refer to pre-2019 missing-person figures.The figures show that 14,593 adult women went missing in J&K between 2019 and June 2026. Of them, 11,338 were traced, while 3,255 remain missing.They also show that 1,804 minor girls went missing between 2019 and August 2026. While 788 were traced, 1,016 remain missing.“Overall, the authorities have traced 12,126 of the 16,397 missing women and girls, leaving more than 26 per cent of the cases unresolved,” says the report in Tribune.Tribune filed the RTI request with the home department of the Jammu and Kashmir, which transitioned from statehood to a Union Territory in August 2019. The government in New Delhi is in control of policing in the Union Territory.Law & order, policing in J&KEveryday policing is done in J&K by the Union Territory’s police force. The Wire had reported in July 2024 on the political opposition in J&K objecting to the Union government taking over the policing function in the Union Territory by way of budgetary readjustments that became possible after reading down Article 370 and Article 35A and after the J&K Reorganisation Act cleared parliament:For the first time, J&K police’s budget figured in the grants of the Ministry of the Home Affairs (MHA) along with the Central Armed Forces, Intelligence Bureau, Special Protection Group (SPG) National Intelligence Grid, Delhi Police and other organisations under its administrative control… Opposition parties have cautioned that the move hints at New Delhi’s direct control of the erstwhile state’s law and order apparatus for a longer period and restoration of full-fledged statehood seems bleak in the near future.Also read: How LG’s Powers Could Pose a Challenge to the Scrutiny of Human Rights Issues in J&K AssemblyThe Wire had also reported that, in 2019, New Delhi took over the power of legislating on J&K (including the police force) through the Reorganisation Act, which said in Section 28 that:“Subject to the provisions of this Act, the Legislative Assembly may make laws for the whole or any part of the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir with respect to any of the matters enumerated in the State List except the subjects mentioned at entries 1 and 2, namely “Public Order” and “Police” respectively or the Concurrent List in the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India in so far as any such matter is applicable in relation to the Union territories.”Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had clarified at the time of this decision that the Union government had taken over the J&K police budget so that the J&K administration would have more money for developmental activities.Under new rules (via an executive order passed on July 12, 2024, reported by The Wire), the Lieutenant Governor was effectively given the final say on the functioning of the All India Service cadre, the J&K Police and the senior bureaucracy of the Union Territory. The new rules have also placed the “Anti-Corruption Bureau”, the Directorate of Public Prosecutions, prisons and the J&K Forensic Science Laboratory under the LG’s control.Missing women data in RTIAs per the information shared by the J&K home department with Tribune, the year 2025 recorded the highest numbers for both women and girls going missing, at 2,595 and 2,595 cases, respectively. Of these, 493 women remain untraced, while 166 girls who went missing that year are still untraced.“The figures are particularly worrying because more than half of all missing minor girl cases reported since 2019 remain unresolved,” said the Tribune, referring to the missing girls trend from August 2019 to June 2026.The publication also refers to National Crime Records Bureau data for 2024, which recorded 1,202 cases pertaining to kidnapping, abducting or inducing women to compel them for marriage under Section 87 of the BNS in just that year.