Kochi: The state government on Monday submitted before Kerala High Court that 2,221 children aged below 15 had gone missing from August 2014. During this period, 2,171 missing children were traced out. Fifty children aged below 15 years are still missing. The state submitted that it has machinery to trace out the missing children. “If a missing child is not recovered within four months from the date of filing an FIR, the matter would be forwarded to the district anti-human trafficking unit headed by the DySPs of the District Crime Records Bureau.
The TALASH wing functioning in the State Crime Records Bureau publishes the details of the missing children with relevant details periodically in the criminal intelligence gazette. The cyber cells in the districts are also being used for tracing out the children, the state submitted. The High Court had asked the state to inform it of the number of missing children from August 2014 to August 2017. The court was considering a plea filed by Thaju of Panavally, Alappuzha, who submitted that his son Nizamudheen, 15, had gone missing in April 2017. Though a case was registered, the police could not make any headway, the petitioner said.
As per the apex court order, each police station should have at least one trained police officer designated as a juvenile welfare officer to investigate the crime against children. Standard operating procedures must be developed to handle the cases of missing children and to invoke appropriate provisions of law where trafficking child labour, abduction, exploitation and similar issues are disclosed during the investigation and after the recovery of the child.
