Thousands of children go missing each year. is enough being done to trace these kids who might be working in hazardous industries, begging, rag-picking or being pushed into prostitution?
Priyanka Singh, a frail young woman, is distraught. It’s been more than two months since her 18-month-old son, Abhinav, has been missing. She spends sleepless nights, wondering what has become of her cherubic child. “He would be pining for milk in the night,” she says, tears in her eyes.
Abhinav went missing on September 26 this year from outside his home in a narrow lane in Noida. His father, Alok Singh, an executive in EXL Ltd, wanted to buy fruits from the market before leaving for office. The child insisted on going too, but when the father refused, he ran outside crying, lying prostrate on the road. As Priyanka came out to calm him, she saw a crowd gathering around a madari (monkeyman). Seeing the tamasha, the child too calmed down. Priyanka, meanwhile, went back to her one-room home to fetch a shirt for Abhinav as he was not wearing anything. That hardly took a minute. When she came out, he was nowhere to be found, nor was the madari there. Panic-stricken, Priyanka called up Alok, who rushed back. They searched the whole day and reported the matter to the police. An FIR was filed the next day and the madari’s sketch released.
LUCKY JHANVI
What gives the couple hope is the happy return of another missing child—Jhanvi Ahuja. Her disappearance from India Gate lawns on September 28 had grabbed media attention. Even social media was active in trying to locate her, and a Facebook page, bringbackjhanvi, was started by an entrepreneur, Vaibhav Aggarwal. Finally, on Octo-ber 8, the child was found with her head tonsured and a placard around her neck with her name and her father’s number on it. It’s likely the abductors got scared due to the child’s image flashed all over the media.
Seeing the outcome of this incident, Abhinav’s parents too are going all out to retrace their child using the same method, and also held a candle-light march to “bring the home ministry’s attention to the case”. But they are staring at bleak statistics.
In 2012, minister of state for home affairs Jitendra Prasada had stated in the Rajya Sabha that in 2011, 60,000 children were reported missing, of whom 22,000 had not been found. Meanwhile, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, an NGO working for the protection of children in India, on the basis of an RTI application it had filed, stated that between 2008 and 2010, 1,17,480 children had gone missing, out of which 41,546 remained untraced. This data was compiled in a report titled, “Missing Children of India”.
Eighteen-month-old Abhinav disappeared from outside his home in Noida on September 26
Abhinav’s parents have done everything to highlight the issue and hope that they will get back their son
TRAPPED KIDS
These startling figures highlight an equally grave concern: how do these kids disappear and what becomes of them? Rakesh Senger, project director, Campaigns & Victim Assistance, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, asked India Legal to visit the sugarcane fields around Meerut, where the harvesting season was in progress early November. “You will find children working in those fields. Ask them where they are from,” he challenges. He mention the case of two boys from Ballia in UP, who, excited by the prospect of seeing Delhi, ran away from home, boarded a train and were trapped by a gang. While one escaped, the other was forced to work in a sugarcane field for a year. One day, he got hold of a mobile, quickly rang up his uncle and told him vaguely where he was. The police put the number on surveillance and traced the boy.
Another boy, whom India Legal interviewed as part of the “Operation Smile” initiative by the Ghaziabad police to restore missing kids to their families, was rescued after five years. Mohit from Buxar, Bihar, ran away with his friend when he was 9 years old, fed up of daily scoldings at home. Both boarded a train, but the friend, who got down at a station to drink water, was brought back to the family. Mohit, who landed in Jaipur, was kept in captivity by a woman called Salma, and made into a rag-picker. His daily meals depended upon whether he met the target or not. Five years later, he managed to escape and landed into the safe hands of the Ghaziabad police.
Though rescued, Mohit, now 14, is disoriented, withdrawn, and malnourished. His father too has become an alcoholic, says his grandmother. “His going missing took a toll on the family. We are trying to pick up the threads of life again.” The boy is now in the care of his paternal aunts.
These are just a few cases of missing children. In district after district, state after state, kids are falling prey to nefarious, highly organized gangs who are active in human trafficking, supplying children as cheap labor in hazardous industries, agriculture, begging, rag-picking and prostitution. And yes, organ trade too, as was evident from the spine-chilling Nithari incident of 2006. They are also sold to childless couples because adoption laws in our country are very tough. These woe-begone kids can be seen as “Chhotus” in roadside dhabas, cleaning tables and precariously holding tea glasses or singing, “Dil Ke Arima Aasuon Mein” with a harmonium in buses or trains in order to earn a few coins.
POLICE APATHY
So dire is their situation, that a few weeks ago, the Supreme Court, appalled by the lackadaisical attitude of Bihar and Chhattisgarh governments, gave them an ultimatum to locate their missing children within a certain time frame. The sheer apathy of the police to investigate these cases came to light during the Nithari murders when scores of body parts of missing children were found at businessman Moninder Singh Pandher’s residence in Noida. Their indifference showed that the poor and their children don’t matter. It also hinted at the complicity of some police personnel in human organ trade.
However, the police say they work under tremendous limitations, including staff crunch and lack of coordination between various agencies. JL Sharma, former DGP, UP police, says it’s unrealistic to expect that thanas (police stations) can effectively trace missing children. “The problem will not be solved if we leave it to thanas. This has to be taken at the level of district headquarters and dedicated teams have to be created whose only job is to trace missing children.” He admits that tracing missing children is the last priority for police. “Thanedars don’t even bother to file a report, because it would hike crime rate numbers. They just file a ‘missing’ report, but ‘missing’ is no crime in India.”
SMILE PLEASE
A Ghaziabad police initiative brings joy to parents and hope to missing children
The Smile project, launched by the Ghaziabad police, focuses on finding parents of kids they have rescued. Ranvijay Singh, Special DSP, Operation Smile, says that the police force is proactive in bringing to safety abandoned and trafficked children and in tracing their parents. While the hunt is on, the kids are housed in authorized shelter homes in Ghaziabad.
India Legal visited one such shelter home. There’s eight-year-old Saurabh who is tending to his
four-year-old brother, Dabbu. Both were abandoned by their father because of quarrels at home and picked up by the police from a temple a few weeks ago. Then, there’s pretty Bulbul, perhaps five years, who resignedly says that her mother just asked her to step out of the car and sped away.
Her mother’s red kurta and the black car is all she remembers. Seven-year-old Rohtas from Bhojpur speaks so agitatedly that all we can gather is that he worked in a brick kiln with his father before he was separated from his family. Miraj, 7, from Darbhanga, was loitering outside his home when an unknown “uncle’’ picked him up and boarded a train. Thankfully, the man was nabbed by the police and the child brought here. There was also the pathetic sight of an 11-month-old baby, who is just learning to walk and an infant, perhaps a month old. Hopefully, these kids won’t have to wait long to be united with their families.
Lack of coordination is another hurdle as it requires communication at various levels—between police forces at both the inter-district and inter-state level, the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit and the cell for missing children in the CBI. There’s also Childline India Foundation, the nodel agency of the Ministry of Women and Child Development that monitors the 1,098 child services, and the government website—trackthemissingchild.gov.in.
Of course, there are many private initiatives too. Several NGOs have pitched in to help trace missing children, including Bach-pan Bachao Andolan and CRY. A website, missingindiankids.com, run by the National Centre for Missing Children, is the effort of a techie couple in Indore to “give back to society”. And the success of “bringback Jhanvi” has encouraged Vaibhav Aggarwal to start another Facebook page, bringbackthelost.
Mohit with his family after he was found
Rakesh Senger of Bachpan Bachao Andolan
The Bachpan Bachao Andolan stated that between 2008 and 2010, 1,17,480
children had gone missing, out of which 41,546 remained untraced.
PROPER COORDINATION
Coordination between all these players seems daunting at the outset, but is not impossible. Dharmendra Singh, SSP, Ghaziabad, says that though there is “no formal coordination, the criminal procedure code of the IPC authorizes them to go to any state in search of a criminal. But he says that the coope-ration they have got from the police of other states is phenomenal. “If the rescued child remembers his native place’s name, we flash the information and photograph in newspapers of that city, and get in touch with the SHO. This way, we have united 228 kids with their parents since our Operation Smile started.” Senger of Bachpan Bachao Andolan says that they tap into the network of NGOs who are working in this area to locate
the missing children.
Children awaiting their parents at a shelter home
The need of the hour, says Sharma, is to launch a concerted drive to trace these missing children at select spots like railways stations (where touts operate), at temples and road crossings (where these kids beg) or factories (where they may be found working). These kids should be brought to safety and the police should verify where they come from. In addition, if the police are extra careful in districts where vulnerability to human trafficking is high, this problem can be controlled. Shelter homes also need to be roped in. Acharya Tarun, who runs a shelter home in NCR, says the first need is to register these homes and clamp down on illegal ones from where small children are often traded. In registered homes, proper data needs to be maintained for and information about disseminated on a central network.
The question is, does the country feel the pressing need for this effort? Does it care for its poor children and do they come on its priority list? Does it care for the agony of Priyanka, a distraught mother?
—With inputs from Nitish Pandey