The world gasped when it heard about Jeffrey Epstein.

We shook our heads in disbelief. Twelve-year-olds. Fourteen-year-olds. Sixteen-year-olds. Powerful men. Private islands. Locked rooms. Hidden cameras. It sounded like a crime thriller written by a novelist with a twisted imagination.

Except it was real.

And while we clutched our pearls and condemned America for producing such monsters, a small statistic quietly walked past us here at home, coughed politely, and waited to be noticed.

It said, that in Maharashtra alone, 93,940 women went missing across 2024 and 2025. That is not a typo. That is not a rounding error. That is a small city deciding to disappear. Of these, 67,458 were found. We are told this with relief, as though we should clap.

Which leaves us with a question that does not clap back.

What about the rest?

In the same period, 23,429 minor girls were reported missing. (Same ages as Epstein’s girls)  Eighteen thousand seven hundred and sixty-nine were traced. Which again sounds reassuring until you realise that thousands were not. And even for those who were found, what happened in the hours, days, weeks between disappearance and recovery?

Are we asking?

Or are we too busy discussing international scandals to notice the files in our own backyard?

When the Chief Minister presented these figures in the state assembly, it was a written reply. Written replies are very neat. They come with percentages. Seventy two percent found. Eighty point one percent found. Percentages make tragedy look organised. They make horror look statistical.

But behind every percentage are a mother and father staring at a door that does not open.

Behind every statistic is a girl whose story we do not know.

We are outraged at Epstein because he put girls in cages. We imagine iron bars and secret rooms. But cages are not always made of metal. Sometimes they are made of laws that say, protect women by restricting them.

Instead of asking why girls are unsafe, we ask why they are outside.

Instead of strengthening systems, we strengthen curfews.

Instead of empowering women, we debate how tightly they should be supervised.

While Epstein’s evil was monstrous because it exploited vulnerability, ours is even more monstrous as we weaken our women.

 And thus, the real question is whether vulnerability exists only on private islands across the ocean, or whether it has started lurking in homes where girls are not sent to college, or where laws are passed limiting their own decision-making capabilities.

Ninety-three thousand missing in two years!

Let that number sit beside your morning coffee or tea.

If even a fraction of those cases involved exploitation, coercion, trafficking, or abuse, then we do not need to search for monsters abroad. We need to look into our own files.

We shake our heads, like the hypocrites we so famously are, at Epstein’s Cages, knowing fully well, we’re building bigger ones here in India..!

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