Thousands of children, a vast majority of them girls, go missing every year. Most of them are pushed on to the streets as prostitutes, beggars and cheap labourers. Yet, the disappearance of a person is not a crime in India
Data on missing children put out by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs last month in Parliament shows that over 3,25,000 children went missing between 2011 and June 2014, at an average of nearly 1,00,000 every year. Equally worrying is that 55 per cent of those missing children are girls and 45 per cent of all missing children remain untraced. This gives rise to apprehensions that many of them have been pushed into begging or prostitution rackets.
A 2005 study sponsored by the National Human Rights Commission and conducted by the Institute of Social Sciences showed that some 44,000 children are go missing in any given year, and 11,000 of them remain untraced. And this is a conservative estimate as many cases are not reported, or if reported, not registered by the police.
The NHRC’s research on trafficking has shown, through several case studies, that there are linkages between human trafficking and missing persons. It has often been observed that women and children rescued during raids from brothels or sweatshops had been reported missing elsewhere in the country.
Women and children who willingly leave their homes in search of good jobs are not aware that they are being trafficked. Parents, unaware of the hidden dangers, tend to lodge a complaint with the police that their wards are missing. Unfortunately, police seldom properly investigate cases of missing children.
Normally, investigation commences with the registration of a First Information Report which pre-supposes a cognisable offence. But in a case of a missing person or child, no formal FIR is registered. Only a ‘missing person’ entry is made in the police station diary. The Station House Officer forwards it to the Superintendent of Police, who in turn passes it to the police chief.
At the field level, police officers publicise the particulars of the missing persons in the media. The Police Headquarters of each State has a Missing Persons Bureau. A database of missing persons is also maintained by the National Crime Records Bureau which operates under the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
The NCRB acts as a documentation centre. It neither investigates nor monitors or facilitates recovery of missing children. However, it updates its records, if informed by the State police that some of the missing children have been traced. There is no analysis of the problem of missing children in the report ‘Annual Crime in India’ published by the NCRB.
Different States in India follow different procedures to deal with cases of missing children. In Maharashtra, the information is relayed through a ‘police notice’ along with other information pertaining to stolen vehicles, vehicles recovered, appeal for identification of dead bodies etc. Often efforts to trace missing persons stop at this level.
The fact of the matter is that the disappearance of a person is not recognised as a crime under any special or substantive law of the country. Hence, searching for and locating missing persons does not figure in the priority list of law enforcement agencies. It is handled in a casual and ad hoc manner.
In many cases, even after information is received about a missing person, there is a considerable time lag in disseminating that information to other police stations, districts and States. This makes the recovery of missing children far more difficult. law enforcement agencies have to fashion out more efficient documenting and monitoring mechanisms to deal with these cases.
The Supreme Court in Hori lal versus Commissioner of Police, Delhi & Ors issued a number of guidelines with regard to steps to be taken for tracing missing and kidnapped children. These guidelines include publishing the photographs of missing children in newspapers, enquiring about missing children in educational institutions, issuing hue and cry notices, and setting up a multi-task force under the State Crime Investigation Department for locating missing children.
A national centre for missing and exploited children should be set up to forge links between Government and non-Governmental agencies across the country. This will ensure coordinated and integrated field work in recovering missing children. The database has to be updated on a regular basis and the information which is gathered should be properly disseminated.
As per the orders of the Delhi High Court, a cell related to missing persons/children has been set up at the Central Bureau of Investigation. It has been entrusted with the task of coordinating efforts undertaken all over the country for tracing missing persons and children. However, owning to resource constraints, the cell is not functioning effectively.
(The writer is a former Director General of the National Human Rights Commission and former Director of National Police Academy)