Visakhapatnam: Six children, on an average, go missing in Andhra Pradesh every day, with half this number remaining untraced. The child kidnapping racket has spread its network from Srikakulam to Nellore and the anguished parents feel that the authorities are not doing enough to find and return them home. The kidnappers' common practice is to sell the children to childless couples, and they are targeting not only children playing in the open, but also newborns in government hospitals and nursing homes.
District child protection officer (Vizianagaram) B.H. Lakshmi said there existed a nexus between the gangs and staff of maternity hospitals in the region where incidents of child-lifting occurred. There were three such incidents in Vizianaga-ram in the past two years. Data on missing children released by the Home ministry in March 2016 showed that in Andhra Pradesh, 756 boys and 1,366 girls went missing in 2015 and, of these 342 boys and 666 girls (around 50 per cent) were traced.
Senior advocate and president for the Forum of Legal Professionals K. Muralidhar said a majority of the government hospitals do not have CCTV cameras in maternity wards. Nor was there a transparent data base on missing children. The police was also not conducting proper investigations. For example, a gang had abducted an 11-month-old baby boy, B. Navdeep, in Vizag city in May 2016, but abandoned him near his home three days later. The police is yet to make an arrest, he said.
Child Adoption requests pile up:
More than 7,700 applicati-ons for adoption are pending with various states over the past two years, but the number of children available for adoption in the country is low. As per the Central Ado-ption Resource Authority (CARA), the designated nodal agency to co-ordinate the entire adoption process, only 1,600 odd children were available for adoption, as of March 2016.
The number of adoptions taking place within the country has come down from 5,693 in 2010 to 3,011 in 2015-16. Inter-country adoption has not changed much between 2010 and 2015-16. District child protection officer (Vizianagaram) B. H. Lakshmi said every ye-ar a few orphaned and abandoned children ended up in orphanages and cou-ld be adopted by following CARA procedures. Somet-imes, even couples with children of their own wa-nted to adopt a boy or girl.
More female than male children have been adopted in the past three years. As per data, a total of 4,475 male children were adopted between 2013 and 2016, and 6,448 females. The number of children with specials needs who were adopted was 334 in the past one year.
