Eight children go missing in Delhi every day: report
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COMMENTS 
India’s capital Delhi has one of the highest numbers of missing children. What’s more, the country has no central data on the number of children missing, or what has happened to them
No lessons have been learnt from the gruesome Nithari killings, where 19 children went missing for two years before they were found to have been murdered. Children in India continue to go missing in large numbers and except for non-profit organisations few official bodies keep track of the children or attempt to find out what happened to them.
In answer to a right to information question by an NGO, Alliance for Peoples’ Rights, the Delhi police revealed that 2,161 children had been registered as missing in New Delhi, in a span of 270 days, in 2010. That’s an average of eight children going missing every day. Of them, 603 are yet to be traced.
The highest numbers of missing cases were reported from outer Delhi and the northwest district. While 549 children, from infant to 18 years, went missing in outer Delhi, 465 others in the same age-group were missing from the neighbouring northwest district. The outer district police managed to trace 427 children, but the northwest district police were able to recover only 203 children. The southeast district did not bother to provide any figures even though Sangam Vihar has traditionally been a vulnerable area.
The Delhi police said most missing children belonged to migrant families. “About 70% of people residing here are labourers who go out to work leaving their children behind. We have tied up with four NGOs to set up crèches. We hope to make a beginning by providing a safe zone where parents can leave their children,” DCP (outer) Chhaya Sharma said.
Meanwhile, parents of children who had gone missing gathered outside the Press Club in Delhi on December 30, 2010, demanding police action on their complaints. Their children, all below 12 years, had gone missing across the city in the past three years. Mostly poor migrant labourers, they pooled in their own money to put up posters asking the general public for any information about their children.
Lack of action on the part of the police has been a longstanding complaint. There is no central data on missing children in India. Consequently, it is not known whether children are being picked up for criminal activities by organised gangs, sold into prostitution or labour, or have run away for a specific purpose.
According to the National Human Rights Commission, over 44,000 children go missing every year. The National Centre for Missing Children says there are 10 lakh runaways in India every year, that is, a child runs away from home every 30 seconds.
Directions from the courts have had little impact. In September 2010, the Delhi High Court directed the city police to find out whether organised gangs were behind cases of children going missing.
The court also directed that detailed information be given to the Delhi Legal Services Authority (DLSA) on 489 children who had gone missing since November 2009. The DLSA was directed to monitor whether the police register legal complaints in the missing children cases, as there were complaints that this was not being done. A year earlier, in September 2009, the court directed the police to register FIRs immediately after receipt of a complaint by a victim’s family. Also, to upload the information on its website.
Source: PTI, December 30, 2010, September 9, 2010
www.expressindia.com, December 30, 2010