As many as 32 children trafficked out of Jharkhand have been brought back to the State on Sunday night by special teams constituted by Crime Investigation Department to recue children languishing in other states away from their family members. The rescue effort was the part of ‘Operation Muskan’ launched by the department to act on inputs about missing children of the State.
Around seven teams comprising police officials of various districts were flagged off to eight States on April 30 to bring back lost children of the State. The result after 10-days of intensive search has been encouraging for the department and now the focus has shifted to settle and rehabilitate
“Results have been very encouraging and children have been brought back. Further, how they (children) will be settled and their rehabilitation is being looked into by the department. Girls will be sent to Kasturba Gandhi School,” said ADG, CID, Renzi Dungdung.
The 32 rescued children —16 boys and 16 girls — who were languishing shelter homes and observation homes in Delhi, Chandigardh, Mumbai, Hyder-abad, Ajmersharif, lucknow and Ahmedabad. Notably, the team identified around 57 children of Jharkhand hailing from Giridih (5), Sahibganj (13), Palamau (7), Ranchi (2), Pakur (1), Khunti (5), Gumla (6), Chaibasa (1), Ramgarh (2), Simdega (2), Jamshedpur (2), Koderma (2), Dumka (1), Dhanbad (1), latehar (3), Hazaribagh (1) and lohardaga (1). Besides, district of residence of two children could not be verified. Of the children rescued by the teams, two are under 10 years of age whereas remaining 30 fall in the age bracket of 10-18 year. Even as 32 children have been brought Jharkhand police is waiting teams to return from four states to bring 25 remaining children back the State.
“We will produce them before Child Welfare Committee. Anything related to trafficking or other reasons could be ascertained only after talking to them. Since the team returned on Sunday we will share other details bit by bit,” said IG Organised Crime, Sampat Meena.
Interestingly, the special teams verified children living at eight locations and identified around 104 cases of children trafficked from other states. Even as the list of children belonging to Jharkhand will be shared with the department of Social Welfare to start the process of rehabilitation details of remaining children in distress and still awaiting their state officials to rescue them will be shared with the corresponding nodal officers of those states.
“Strategies for rehabilitation of these children have been prepared with help of all the stakeholders. We will share details of children belonging to Jharkhand with the Director Social Welfare and details of remaining have been sent to the nodal officers of other States,” added Meena.
Apart from children hailing from Jharkhand, the ‘Operation Muskan’ team identified that 24 children belong to Bihar, Utter Pradesh (1), Chhatisgarh (1), Maharashtra (2), Telangana (15), Odisha (1), Tamil Nadu (2) and Andhra Pradesh (1).