Under the ongoing Operation Smile that started from June 1, Uttarakhand police have rescued 77 missing children from different places of the state. Out of them, 13 children have been sent to the homes meant for children while the rest were reunited with their families. Notably, State DGP MA Ganapathy had launched the latest chapter of Operation Smile on June 1 to trace the missing children and rehabilitate or to reunite them with their families. The operation would continue till June 30.
Under the campaign, four teams, one each from Dehradun, Haridwar, Nainital and Udham Singh Nagar, and one team each from the mountainous districts were formed. Each team comprises a sub-inspector and four constables.
Besides, to assist the teams engaged in searching the missing children, one legal team and one technical team were formed too. Anti- human trafficking nodal officer Shahjahan Javed Khan, additional SP, based at police headquarters, is monitoring the functioning of the teams. The operation is being conducted at places like shelter homes, dhabas, factories, bus stations and railway stations from where the chance of recovering the missing children is maximum.
Others departments have been roped in the campaign too. District officers are searching the missing children not just in their jurisdictional areas but other districts/states too.
It is learnt that out of 77 children rescued so far, 15 missing children were registered as missing while cases of 62 were unregistered.
A team from Dehradun had rescued a registered missing girl child from Bengal while Haridwar team had rescued another registered missing children of Jharkhand. Champawat police had rescued a registered missing boy and a girl of Nepal while Nainital police had rescued a girl Urmila from Rudrapur.
A total of 13 missing children were recovered by the teams in Dehradun district while 18 were recovered in Haridwar, five in Nainital, 13 in Udham Singh Nagar, three each in Pauri and Rudraprayag, one each in Tehri, Chamoli and Bageshwar, two in Uttarkashi, 10 in Champawat, four in Pithoragarh and three by Railway police.
It should be mentioned here that the number of missing children till April 2017 in the State was 418.