In 2016, 6,921 children were reported missing from the city, of them, 1,894 are yet to be traced
Kusum's life turned upside down last Tuesday, when she returned to her Sultanpuri home to find her 14-year-old son Ankit missing. Recalling that she had slapped him after an argument in the morning, she instinctively understood the gravity of the situation and informed the police. Since then, there has been no trace of the boy and the police investigation is also losing steam.
"My day now starts with looking for my son. My husband is a tailor and I work as domestic help. One of us goes out to look for him while the other one works. We have distributed his pictures in the nearby localities. He is our only son," Kusum says.
But the police department is also helpless as Ankit is one of the thousands of missing, untraced children in the Capital. In 2016 alone, 6,921 children were reported missing from the city. Of them, 1,894 are yet to be traced. Zayur Rehman, 15, a resident of Shaheen Bagh in southeast Delhi, is one of them.
Zayur went out to play with his friends two days ago and did not return. His father Abdul Ansari, who works as a driver, says the police have remained very casual about his son's missing report. "We are making our own effort as police investigation seems to have lost its pace in two days. They have said they will inform us if they come to know about anything. But we being family members can't sit quiet," Abdul said.
According to statistics, 57,356 children below the age of 18 years have been reported missing in the Capital, with 8,435 of them still missing. What is more alarming is the fact that children constitute almost 36 per cent of the 1,59,947 people who were reported missing during this period.
A further analysis of data revealed a curious trend — as many as 8,165 children below the age of eight years were reported missing from 2008-2016, while this number was 7,746 for those in the age group of 8-12 years. The number, however, shoots up considerably for teenagers, with the data showing that 41,445 (72 per cent) children in the age group of 12-18 years were reported missing.
During the last three years, the data for which is available, 7,572 children were reported missing in 2014, 7,928 in 2015 and 6,921 in 2016. While 1,353 children who went missing in 2014 are yet to be traced, the same number for 2015 and 2016 stood at 1,778 and 1,894, respectively.
Every year, more than 15,000 rescued children are taken to various NGOs, such as Prayas. Amod Kanth, who runs Prayas, said that 90-95 per cent of them are reunited as proper inquiries are conducted and police are roped in for the investigation.
"The problem is that we don't have a strong national-level tracking system. Since 2009-2010, the national figure of missing persons has seen a three-time increase. This is because the recording and reporting of such cases has increased," Kanth said.
A large number of these children are also rescued because not all of them fall victim to trafficking or are kidnapped. Most of them drift due to poor economic conditions, poor parenting or because of an argument or dispute," he added.
He added that at Prayas, hundreds of such cases are reported everyday. "In our 45 centres across the country, we get nearly 15,000-17,000 children every year. They are taken care of and their rehabilitation and reunion is what we focus on," he further said.
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