Worrying trend

The sharp rise in the number of children who go missing in the country is indeed alarming. The data procured from the Union ministry of home affairs by the NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan found that during 2008-10, 1,17,480 children were reported missing in 392 districts. The study found that West Bengal accounts for most of the disappearances with districts bordering Bangladesh registering the largest numbers, pointing in the direction of cross-border trafficking. A large number of children who go missing are from the national capital Delhi and other metros. From Karnataka, 99 girls were reported missing in 2008, which fell to 41 the next year and then surged to 130 in 2010. Country-wide figures for missing children provided by the National Crime Records Bureau too show a similar trend. While some children run away from home, many are victims of organised gangs engaging in human trafficking. They are sold as bonded labourers or to begging mafias in the big cities. Some even land up in the sex trade. Others are abducted for harvesting of organs.

Tracing missing children is difficult because often they are too young to be able to articulate information about their families and homes to the police. Besides, the human trafficking network is immensely powerful. This network includes policemen. The very people who should be tracing missing children are part of the trade. Since most missing children belong to economically weaker sections they lack the clout to get the police to hunt for the children. Especially in the case of adolescent girls they insist she has eloped. Meanwhile many hours are lost giving the traffickers a head start and making tracing of the child all the more difficult. Children of migrant labourers have been found to be the most vulnerable to trafficking. It is when parents go to work leaving children behind that traffickers swoop in and take away the child.

The government must make it mandatory for builders to provide safe creches at construction sites. Moreover, co-ordination between states on tracing children is reportedly poor. The home ministry has suggested computerisation of records and DNA profiling. The country needs a specialised agency to deal exclusively with missing children. We need a national centre that has an all-India database for tracking missing children. With the advance in technology, tracing missing children should not be difficult.