Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has awarded six police officers based in Uttarakhand for their roles in ‘Operation Smile’ that was launched by the State police to rescue the missing children at a conference on anti- human trafficking in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Awardees are Additional SP (Police Headquarter) Mamta Vohra, Sub-inspectors- Rajesh Kumar (Haridwar), Vinod Chaurasiya (Uttarkashi), Manju Pandey (Champawat), Raj Vikram (Dehradun) and Sanjeev Mamgain (Haridwar). Out of 43, six police officers of Uttarakhand were awarded by the home minister Rajnath Singh.
Additional SP Vohra expressed satisfaction over this achievement and said that the focus of the operation smile was on searching and rescuing the missing persons about whom missing reports have been filed since 2000 in various police stations and handing them over to their families.
It should be mentioned here that Uttarakhand police rescued had 576 missing children under “Operation Smile’ that was launched by the State director general of police BS Sidhu on January 1. Additional SP (crime, law and order) Mamta Vohra was made nodal officer of the operation with the direction to monitor the operation from police headquarters. As part of this operation, around 40 teams, including seven each for Dehradun, Haridwar and other districts, were constituted.
As per PHQ official, a month- long ‘Operation Smile’ was launched on January 1, 2015 and 188 missing children were rescued out of which 164 children were handed over to their families while 24 were sent to child protection centres. Team had rescued 264 missing children from various districts during the second phase of “Operation Smile’ that was launched from July1for a month in the state. The rest 124 was rescued since August. Many hailed it as an achievement on the part of the police against the backdrop of the common refrain that the cops are failing to rein in the prowling criminals.