The cases of missing children in Odisha went up rapidly after the Super Cyclone in 1999, and by 2005, the State had registered a whopping 4,821 children as missing.
This figure continued its upward trend, and subsequently reports of these children becoming victims of several crimes poured in from all parts of the State. However, after the last year’s Supreme Court’s direction for protection of missing children in the case of Bachpan Bachao Andolan, the State police have decided to launch a month-long drive called Operation Smile in January 2015 to trace all the missing children. In view of the next month’s drive, a State-level training programme for police officers on different child rights Acts was held here at the police headquarters here on Saturday.
Inaugurated by DGP Sanjeev Marik, the programme was addressed by several resource personnel who sensitised the police officers about the laws governing child rights. The police officers drawn from all the districts were told as to how to handle the child-related problems and the modalities to be followed during rescue and rehabilitation of missing children. The apex court in its direction had very categorically stated that all cases of missing children are to be registered as FIRs of cognisable offence and proper investigations are to be made in these cases presuming them to be of a crime of kidnapping or trafficking unless proven otherwise.
The court had also directed to have a trained police officer as Juvenile Welfare Officer (JWO) at each police station and all complaints of non-cognisable offences pertaining to children are to be investigated after referring them to a magistrate.