THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: At least one child goes missing every day in the state but the police force has only a murky idea of how to go about tracing these kids. The consequence is that even when missing kids are finally traced, the reasons behind the child’s disappearance are left unaddressed. Now, after the High Court, too, had expressed disapproval of the lax handling of child missing cases, DGP Loknath Behera has insisted that the state police follow certain established procedures. The primary thing to be done once a missing case is reported, the DGP has stated in his latest circular, is to collect a recent photograph of the missing child and upload it on the national website, www.trackthemissingchild.gov.in.
Along with the photograph, general information like name, age, address, place of missing and date of missing should also be uploaded. Even this is inadequate. The child's physical features, identification marks and peculiarities or deformities, if any, should also be included. “Most police stations in the state, though each one of them have been given user ID and password, have failed to do the necessary updation,” a top social justice official said.
It is on the basis of the incomplete data available on the website that the state police had stated in the Court recently that 2221 children were reported missing in the state during the last three years, and that 50 are yet to be traced. The latest figures on the site states that 2714 children have been reported missing and that only 1817 have been traced, which means the whereabouts of 897 kids continue to be a mystery. The police have also messed up the post-discovery protocol. It is usual for the concerned police station to return the child back to her home or to the orphanage from where she had gone missing. The appropriate action would be to produce the child before the Child Welfare Committee.
“Because it is only at the CWC that the child is asked in detail, and with sensitivity, about the reasons for her missing,” the official said. “The police believe their job is done once the child is found out but if the causes for her missing are not probed the child could be put through the same trauma yet again,” he added. Though unintended, the DGP’s circular also exposes the state police's shortcomings. It, for instance, speaks about the need for the police to inform the child welfare police officer and the need to forward the FIR to the special juvenile police unit. The irony is, the state has neither any child welfare police officers nor has it set up any special juvenile police units.
