Criticising the Delhi Police for its poor show in tracing missing children and “wasting its manpower” in PCR vans, the Delhi High Court on Monday sought to know the status of facial recognition software that can match the photograph of a child believed to be lost with the missing person database.
The software will also help match faces of children who go missing with those who are found and shifted to different childcare homes.
‘Rarely recovered’
A Bench of Justices G.S Sistani and Jayant Mehta came down on the Delhi Police as it remarked that missing children are recovered only in rare cases as it was informed that the facial recognition software was awaiting approval from the Centre.
The Bench was also of the view that the police was not utilising its manpower properly. “Each PCR van has three to four officers and a driver. They all drive personal vehicles, so why do they need a driver. A driver alone is sufficient to do everything,” the Bench said.
Cutting staff
It said that by cutting down on Police Control Room staff, one officer can be shifted to cases pertaining to child welfare which would also include cases of missing children and asked the Delhi Police to start the exercise district-wise initially before putting one such officer in each police station.
The court was hearing a matter which was raised in 1981 as a writ of habeas corpus with regard to a missing infant.
The writ later came to be treated as a Public Interest Litigation. The court also said that what the country was lacking was not the laws but their implementation.
