Courts to the rescue of missing children

While there are periodic reports in the media about abducted children, there is no systematic approach to the larger issue of missing children in the country. An order of the Allahabad High Court provides hope for ending police apathy and instituting a more co-ordinated approach to the problem. Karuna Dayal reports for Combat Law Magazine.

Link: http://www.combatlaw.org/?p=888

In Malancha Rajbari, a 15 year old girl managed to return after a year in a Delhi brothel……… “Once in Delhi, they put me in a brothel, where I was tortured and sexually abused. It continued for a year before I ran away in the morning”. In Khammam district-Andhra Pradesh, Sujata (name changed) was 10 years when she was sold to a brothel in Mumbai for Rs. 2000… “We used to live with Mrs. Trivedi… she used to take us for picnics with lots of men…we were not given any money…only food and clothes to wear”. She is 15 now and back. An estimated 30,000 girls are trafficked into the sex industry every year. Some are sold by poverty-stricken parents hoping that their children will find employment as domestic servants. Others are simply snatched off the streets, drugged, raped, and sold to brothel “madams.”

Due to the ignorance and apathy on part of the government and the police there has been a steady increase in the number of missing children each year. The shocking and traumatic Nithari killings in Noida underline the growing sense of insecurity and helplessness among the Indian citizens as a result of the lack of accountability in the government, police and other law-enforcement agencies. This lack of accountability is reflected in the inattentive and lax approach of the police when agonised parents come to seek their help. The court recently has brought the issue into the open and has also put the entire scenario of missing children in perspective. When the numbers of missing children provided by various organisations are collated they add up to an unacceptably large number. And it is possible that this is only the tip of the iceberg, since there may well be a large number of unreported cases.

For instance, in Ghaziabad alone, in the last three months 45 children had gone missing, as revealed by a local organisation. In Delhi, NavShrishti, an NGO working on child rights, on filing for an RTI (Right to Information), came to know that there were approximately a hundred children missing in the age group of 3 to 18 years. Countless children go ‘missing’ every year all over the country. These missing children are victims of abductions/kidnappings by family members, abductions/kidnappings carried out by non-family  members or strangers, children who run away on their own or are forced to run away due to compelling  circumstances in their families and extended surroundings, children who face unfriendly and hostile  environment and are asked to leave home or who are abandoned, children who are trafficked or smuggled or exploited for various purposes, and children who are lost or injured. This matter was brought to the notice of the court in Allahabad, when a distressed father took help of the law to find his child. It became evident then that there were more than 7000 children who had been missing for more than two years. Not only the administration and the police but also civil society takes no notice of this issue with the requisite seriousness. It seems that, on account of excess work load or a faulty system or a low sense of accountability or the want of a sound support system of justice and government, they just want to wash their hands off matter rather than making efforts to find ways and means to trace these children.

The police take advantage of the  vulnerability of the average citizen who is not aware of the law and often does not have the financial capacity  to take any required action. The government and the concerned bodies

accept the fact that the number of missing children is, in fact, more than the statistics given in reports from  time to time. It could be quite possible that in some cases the child for various reasons has run away on his or her own from home, a relative’s home, or an institution which the child’s parents/guardians construe as ‘missing’. But the consistent increase in the number of missing children all around the country makes it difficult to judge the gravity of the problem.

However, the guidelines set by the Allahabad High Court for missing children should put an end to the

lethargic attitude to the police and the government. This historic order of the Court came following the inaction of the police and the plea of a retired postal department employee, Vishnu Dayal Sharma, who moved the Allahabad High Court for tracing his 17 year old son Krishna Gopal when he went missing on February 22, 2005. The Court, acting on his plea, sought details from the state government on complaints of missing children of various age groups across the state. The case was heard by a bench, comprising Justice Amar Saran that started on January 2, 2007.

Following the orders of the bench the police lodged a report for Krishna Gopal’s kidnapping on January 5, 2007. Krishna Gopal has now returned home and the case for his kidnapping was closed eventually when a villager recognised him in a train. It was as a result of this case that data regarding missing children came out into the open, something that was otherwise kept under wraps by the police. Between 2000 and April 2008
there were 7,659 cases of missing children lodged in Uttar Pradesh. Of these, 5, 965 children have either been found or have died. It is not clear whether children who have returned home came back on their own or were returned with the help of the police. But, the biggest and most crucial question is, how are the remaining 2000 children still out of the police radar? The guidelines and orders that have proceeded from the

hearings on the missing children case in the Allahabad High Court have made the officials and the governing bodies answerable to the court. The court has asked the central and state governments to work in coordination to solve the problem of children who go missing. As a result of the directions of the high court there has been some visible change in the tracing of missing children, primarily in enabling poor and helpless parents to obtain legal and government access. The court has brought together the ministry of home affairs, ministry of women and child development, ministry of labour, ministry of social welfare, Delhi Government, Delhi Police, National Crime Records Bureau and prominent NGOs both at the Centre and state levels.

As directed by the high court, the police and the judicial system have been evidently showing some results.
The Uttar Pradesh Commissioner of Police has said that the missing children bureau has pasted two kinds of

missing children posters at various places in the state. One of the posters has mentioned the contact numbers

of an authorised body while the other has information for parents of missing children for the safety of the

child. According to the directions of the court, a budget of Rs 12.7 crores for the period of 2007-08 was allocated for taking photographs of school going children from the age group of 6 to 14 years. Till May 2008 the committee had involved the ministry of home affairs, ministry of women and child development, ministry of labour, ministry of social welfare, legal services authority, district magistrate, Allahabad in the mission to
rescue children.

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