It’s International Missing Children’s Day today. Time to look at the hard facts: according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report, which was cited by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in Parliament recently, more than one lakh children (1,11,569 in actual numbers) were reported to have gone missing between 2014 to 2016. Out of this, 55,625 children could not be traced till the end of 2016.
This means 174 children went missing every day during this period. And more shockingly, only half of them were back.
The MHA figures indicate that more than half of all missing children in the country are concentrated in just five states – West Bengal, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Bihar. West Bengal tops the list with a huge 15.13 per cent of all missing children in the country in 2016, while Delhi had 13.14 per cent missing children during this time. Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Bihar accounted for 10.8 per cent, 8.9 per cent and 5.2 per cent of India’s missing children respectively.
The fact that these children go missing is no accident. It is directly linked to organised crimes. Puja Marwaha, chief executive officer of Child Rights and You (CRY) said, “It is disturbing that our children go missing and we can’t bring them back home. The evidences on ground and numbers indicate that a large number of missing children are actually trafficked, kidnapped or abducted.”
Where are these missing children taken? They are sucked into a range of exploitative work – mostly in organ trade, child labour and commercial sexual exploitation, say experts working in the field. Child abduction and trafficking in India is also growing because on the one hand, the supply chain of victims is fed by extreme poverty, and on the other hand there is economic impetus for middlemen and traffickers to thrive, Marwaha added.
She hopes the Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2018, which is soon to become a law, and government initiatives that help in tracking status of missing children, including Operation Smile and Muskaan, can change the situation in future.
However, it also requires awareness for every citizen, and people be responsible about reporting to the police every time they find a child in circumstances that raises suspicion.
Also note:
*Kidnapping and abduction of children is the highest number of crime committed against children, and accounts for 51 per cent of all crimes against children
*70 per cent of the victims of kidnapping and abduction are girls
*The number of cases of kidnapping and abduction of children has gone up by over 250 per cent in the past five years
