New Delhi: Delhi recorded a 2% drop in missing persons cases in 2025, a downward trend that has continued into early 2026, Delhi Police said on Thursday while releasing more related data.Coupled with a cumulative recovery rate of 77% over the past decade, the data shows Delhi maintaining a per-capita missing person rate of 122.5 per 1,00,000, which is, according to police, lower than figures reported in major cities in both the UK and the US.
This statistical stability, they said, was despite a robust, digital-first reporting mechanism, which allowed citizens to file cases immediately via mobile apps and portals. This level of accessibility, a Delhi Police spokesperson said, meant that even short-duration absences — such as children delayed from school, teenagers temporarily unreachable due to connectivity issues or precautionary filings by anxious parents — were immediately recorded into the official statistics.Statistical trends in missing persons cases reveal a significant acceleration in recovery efficiency when comparing historical data to recent performance. In 2016, 23,409 people were reported missing, with 20,029 eventually traced. “While this represents a solid 85% recovery rate, it is important to note that this success was achieved over a cumulative nine-year tracking period,” a senior officer explained.Far from an “abnormal spike”, the most recent data from Jan 2026 confirms this cooling trend. With 1,777 missing persons reported in the first month of the year, the figures are not only lower than the monthly average for 2025, which stood at 2,042, but also represent a decrease from the 1,786 cases recorded in Jan 2024.Many of these people are traced within hours, though they remain on the books if the families do not formally report their return, underscoring that high reporting numbers are often a sign of a transparent, responsive system rather than a surge in long-term disappearances.In contrast, the data for 2025 shows a remarkably aggressive pace. Out of 24,508 missing persons reported, 15,421 have already been traced within that same calendar year. This indicates a 63% recovery rate in a fraction of the time compared to previous decades.The recovery figures for 2025 and 2026 are expected to rise as ongoing investigations and search efforts continue into subsequent months. “Because tracing is a continuous process, these detection percentages will naturally improve over time as more cases from the current cycle reach their resolution,” the officer added.Delhi Police also claimed that the city had outperformed major global capitals like London and New York in missing persons management, maintaining a significantly lower per-capita rate of 122.5 per lakh than major cities in the UK and the US.In the UK, police data indicates a much higher incidence rate of roughly 254 per 1,00,000, while the US, according to FBI National Crime Information Center figures, maintains a rate of 138, police said. This positioni-ng, cops said, suggested that despite the high raw numb-ers often cited in political discourse, Delhi’s safety landscape was notably more stable than those of major weste-rn hubs when viewed through a standardised lens.
