NEW DELHI: Nearly 36,000 children are missing without a trace across India since 2020 even though the state and central police have recovered majority of the nearly 3 lakh children who went missing in the last four years, Centre informed SC on Friday.
Appearing for petitioner, senior advocate Aparna Bhat told a bench of Justices B V Nagarathna and Satish Chandra Sharma that there are several cases where state police is impeded in prosecuting persons involved in the inter-state child-trafficking racket and requested the court for a probe by a national agency like CBI.
Additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati informed the court that apart from ‘khoya-paya’ portal, Centre has advised states to transfer missing children cases to anti-human trafficking unit, if they remain untraced for four months of lodging of complaints by parents or relatives. She said Centre has provided financial assistance to the tune of Rs 100 crore to states and UTs for upgrading and setting up of anti-human trafficking units covering every district to address ‘prevention, protection and prosecution’ aspects of the child kidnapping cases.
But the data provided by states and collated by Centre narrated a heart-rending story of thousands of parents waiting for years for the return of their missing children. In Bihar, over 24,000 children have been found missing since 2020. The police are yet to trace over 12,600 of them, the status report said.
The highest number of missing children at 58,665 were from MP , but the police could trace 45,585 within four months. However, 3,955 are yet to be traced. Like Bihar, as many as 24,291 children in Odisha went missing since 2020, and the police are yet to locate 4,852 of them. Centre informed court that despite several reminders, Delhi, Punjab, Nagaland, Jharkhand, TN , WB , J&K and AP did not provide data relating to missing children and the number of traced ones.