That was a shocking number when they put that up at the end of the film. I knew it was still bad there, but 80,000 boggles the mind.

@Markoff said:

that seem quite odd considering abundance of smartphones and internet even in poor India, I would be more interested how many are missing more than few days before found

we all know in 1987 they didn't have internet but they didn't have list of villages? I find it odd despite wrong pronunciation they would not be able to find the village in list, if someone would actually bother to look through few hundred names of villages starting with G

it's hard to imagine something like this happening in most of the world (not necessarily civilized), it's sad to see such ignorance/apathy of people to each other (reminding me also China where I lived for years) where people don't care about 5 year old roaming streets and don't try to help him to find family or shelter. I don't think it has anything to do with how developed/rich is any country, been to poorest villages of Philipines as well and they were superclean compared to what I experienced in India, so there is no excuse for people acting this way regarding lost children or dirty enviroment, money is just lame excuse, I blame religion...

Religion?

@shtexas said:

That was a shocking number when they put that up at the end of the film. I knew it was still bad there, but 80,000 boggles the mind.

i am pretty sure in that number are counted children who are found hours later who just forgot to tell parents they go to friends, purpose of so huge number is purely to shock

I don't believe the numbers are there for shock. Think about the number of people living in India. 80K children out of 1.25 billion people. Having listened to several stories on NPR, and hearing how often children are kidnapped in India, 80K doesn't seem like the purpose of that huge number is purely to shock.

Many women go missing - kidnapped for trafficking and sex trade purposes. As do young children.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/84-rise-in-missing-children-in-3-years/articleshow/52422515.cms - 84% rise from 2013 to 2015. Wouldn't be surprised if it rose even further from 2015 to now.

Corruption is also huge in India, so it's possible the police might turn a blind eye to something suspicious that happens.

http://www.huffingtonpost.in/dipin-damodharan/180-children-go-missing-e_b_10114654.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/02/2013219121326666148.html http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/12/india-dark-holes-millions-girls-disappear-151203073343634.html http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/these-stats-on-children-going-missing-in-india-shows-just-why-you-need-to-be-really-concerned-255647.html

Some of the data is overlapped, but it shows that it is a serious problem. Some numbers definitely are runaway children.

@vocalise in one of your links mention "The total number of untraced children in 2013 was 34,244 - the figure jumped up to 62,988 in 2015."

still far from 80K claim and i find also had believe that number would jump in two years almost two fold, so any newest statistics supporting that 80K claim of children who miss longer than few days

well this is at least one benefit of Chinese police state with CCTV on every corner, children are kidnapped but for sure not 80K missing children per year

I think you're all missing the point here. 80,000 or 60,000, the numbers are catastrophic! Instead of nitpicking and linking statistics, be outraged that this is happening in our world, to children nonetheless.

@diadara said:

I think you're all missing the point here. 80,000 or 60,000, the numbers are catastrophic! Instead of nitpicking and linking statistics, be outraged that this is happening in our world, to children nonetheless.

we don't know how many children are unaccounted long-term, in that case it would be sticking number, calculated per small European country with 5mil it would make 230 missing children while i guess real number will be less than dozen, although if we count also children missing only for few hours it would be significantly bigger but still few times less than India which can be explained by lower living standard and in general lower value of life

I don't see that at all surprising in a country of 1.25B people of which 39% are children and 29% are below the age of five. In the US alone, 465,676 went missing in 2016. (http://www.missingkids.com/KeyFacts) Now, only 1% of those (4,650) are abducted by strangers. If you take that number and just multiply it times five (since the US has roughly 1/5th the population of India) you come up with 23,250. In the US, children under the age of eighteen are only 24% of the population, almost half that of India. So at the very least, not accounting for demographic and social differences you get a figure of roughly 45,000 kids that are actually abducted.

That does NOT account for the issue of infanticide in India, which still occurs, when children--especially girls--are killed by their parents because of poverty or a lack of interest in female children. There are various reasons that that 80,000 figure sounds realistic and, to my ears, even a extremely low. The issue in India, though, is even a bit more frightening because many of the children that ARE abducted are sold into the sex trade. There have been reports that similar things happen in the US to some of the children brought across the border from South America by smugglers.