Of all the fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution, the right to life is the most central to the functioning of a state. It is (or should be) inviolable, but if one's right to life is abridged, without the proper application of the law, and if the state takes no action to address the situation and arrest the phenomenon, then not only does the rule of law become the law of the jungle—the Constitution stands defiled, the credentials of the state is slighted and the dignity of society sullied.

This is unacceptable in a society that takes pride as a votary of rule of law. According to a local human rights watchdog, between 2009 and September 2021, as many as 605 persons have disappeared, of whom 154 remain untraced. Among the disappeared, 370 have returned, and a gruesome 81 persons have been found dead during the mentioned period. Predictably, the state agencies have denied any involvement in the matter, but accounts of the victims' families in most cases talk about the victims being picked up by people in plainclothes, sometimes claiming to be members of state agencies.

We do not want to point fingers at anyone, but in this regard, one must acknowledge some incontrovertible facts. First, people have gone missing and a good number still remain unaccounted for. Two, a good number of them have ended up dead. Three, most of those who have returned, suffer inexplicably from a bout of amnesia; they are unable to recall anything of the period after they were captured, kidnapped or apprehended, till they returned home.

Does it not then become the responsibility of the state to go into the depth of the matter? If the state agencies are not involved in enforced disappearances, as they claim, then does it not devolve on them to find out who is? Are we to believe that there is a supra-entity that has managed to cause the enforced disappearance of more than 600 people? Is it not the enough to raise the hackles of the security and intelligence agencies and get them moving to apprehend whoever these people are—who are working clandestinely and doing so since the last decade, and so efficiently too that they are able to evade being identified, leave alone captured, by the state agencies?

These are questions that cannot be brushed aside with puerile answers from the authorities. There are only so many possibilities and reasons behind a person going missing. And that is all the more reason that every missing persons case should be thoroughly investigated. Thus, we wonder, why is there reluctance on the part of the police, reportedly, to register "missing persons" cases? And in some cases, there are pressures on the victim' families to withdraw the case. It demands demonstrated actions by the agencies to address the issue, but there are none at the moment. The authorities should not be oblivious to the possibility that lack of palpable action on their part may be taken as indicative of complicity.