Faridkot district has nothing to cheer about

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, July 31

The Faridkot police have failed to get much success in the past 30 days, when Operation Muskan — a project implemented throughout India following a directive from the Centre — was on in July to track missing children.

Many protests, dharnas and district-level bandhs have been organised in the recent times against the increasing number of missing persons in the district.

The Faridkot police claim to have screened children residing in shelter homes, railway platforms, slum areas near railway stations, bus stands, roads and religious places in the past month, but no “missing” child was found from Faridkot. In one case, the Faridkot police were successful in helping the Rajasthan police trace a 15-year-old missing boy. This boy, hailing from Gangapur town of Bhilwara in Rajasthan, went missing from the house of his maternal uncle in Jaitu in Faridkot. 

After the sister of the boy filed a writ petition in the Jaipur High Court demanding the search for her missing brother, the Bhilwara and Faridkot police jointly traced this boy from Dehradun. 

Suffering with some mental disorder, this boy was working as a waiter at a dhaba in Dehradun, said Baljit Singh Sidhu, DSP, Kotkapura. During many public protests earlier, the Faridkot police were accused of being reluctant in registering cases of missing children, but in the past month, the police have uploaded eight entries of missing children on the 'Talash' portal of the National Crime Record Bureau.

The police have uploaded all the information with photographs of the missing children on the national portal so that these children can be traced all across the country. These children went missing in the past 30 months in Faridkot district. 

No trace of HP boys

The whereabouts of two Himachal Pradesh teenagers, who went missing on October 17, 2013 from BSF campus Faridkot, remains unknown. Their parents have now lost all hope of their return. The parents have raised the matter with Himachal Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and senior BJP leaders Prem Kumar Dhumal and Shanta Kumar to speak with the Punjab Government to search the missing boys, but all their efforts have proved futile.

17-year-old Ajit Sharma, a student of mechanical engineering in Solan and his first-cousin Rajiv Sharma (14 years) went missing on October 17, 2013, a day after Ajit reached Faridkot to meet his maternal uncle, Ravinder Kumar Sharma, a BSF sepoy, posted in Faridkot.

(Names of the children have been changed to protect their identity)