Operation Smile: Kids were picked up randomly, says report

Children “rescued” during Operation Smi­l­e, launched by the Police department on August 7 in the City, were picked up indiscriminately without following any proper protocol or attempts made to find out their antecedents, accor­ding to a report released by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties and The Concerned for Working on Saturday.

The operation – aimed at rescuing missing children, children forced into beggary, trafficking and those suffering from addictions – was coordinated by the Police, the Department of Women and Child Development and several non-governmental organisations. The report points out various cases to prove its point based on interactions with children concerned and their parents.

In one instance, a 17-year-old boy, who had come from Siliguri (West Bengal) to visit his uncle, was caught while having breakfast. He had studied till class eight. Another boy, aged 14, was captured while he was visiting his father, a security guard in Fraser Town. He was studying in a school in Uttar Pradesh. His father, too, had documentation to prove this, the report states. “Rather than conducting a detailed investigation, it seemed more likely that the children were picked up based on a profile of what children to be picked up should look like,” the report reads.

Certain rescues were more of “unprovoked ambushes” than rescues, notes the report. One such case was that of an 18-year-old girl from Rajasthan. A street vendor, she was selling wares with an 8-month-old child in her arm. The police insisted the child was not hers and that she was underage. She was physically removed and her mobile phone confiscated. Even though she was released a few days later, the police kept her wares for a longer time, claiming that they could not ascertain the articles belonged to her. She and her husband were not literate and the ordeal led to a loss of income for them, the report says.

The unsystematic mode of capturing children manifests itself in the following example, the report further notes. A passerby had noticed that a child, who was not in the company of the parents, was being taken away by the squad. When she intervened to find out the reason for capture, the squad suggested that she too must get into the vehicle and go with them. When the woman, aged around 25, tried to escape, the squad chased and caught her.

The whole operation was carried out without any documentary evidence, nor was there any co-ordination between various bodies involved, the report says. There was also a discrepancy in the number of children rescued, with the officials not being able to give correct figures. There was also no clear direction on the manner in which the children could be released.