Two teams from Uttar Pradesh police camped in Dehradun and Haridwar to search for children reported missing in Ghaziabad district. Since 2008, over 130 children aged below 18 years were reported missing from Ghaziabad district and 127 of them are still untraced, said loni (Ghaziabad) Police Station sub-inspector Narendra Singh, who reached Dehradun SSP office for seeking cooperation from the district police in searching for the missing children.
According to him, recently Ghaziabad police had launched operation ‘smile’ to search and rescue the missing children reported in the district. For this, several teams have been formed and they have been deployed at various districts in Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. With the coordination among local police of the states concerned, these teams are searching such children in Dhabas, restaurants, hotels, children shelters and other places.
Quizzed over anti human trafficking teams from Uttar Pradesh reaching Uttarakhand to search the missing children, State additional director general of police (law and order) Ram Singh Meena said it might be a routine deployment of teams by Uttar Pradesh police in Haridwar and Dehradun. Haridwar police had recently deployed its teams in the districts of other States to search the missing children and teams had recently rescued some children from Chandigarh and Haryana too.
The district police heads have already been directed to lodge FIRs in the police stations if cases of children missing are reported in their districts, apart from taking steps solve the registered cases, he added.
It should be mentioned here that Uttarakhand (Haridwar) police had recently busted a children-trafficking racket, arresting four persons, allegedly involved in kidnapping children from the pilgrims or railway passengers while they are sleeping at Haridwar Railway Station. The arrested gang members include a couple- Krishnaveer and Rekha- which hails from Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh.
Police had rescued seven babies from the child trafficking gang members. The modus operandi of the traffickers was that they lifted children when they and their parents were asleep and escaped. The operations being successful, they later sold these children off at high prices to those interested to have them for adoption.