Question : Missing Children

(a) whether incidents of missing children have been reported in the country;

(b) if so, the number of such cases registered/disposed of, gender-wise, rackets busted, accused arrested, convicted, children killed, traced/untraced, conviction rate achieved and the steps taken/ mechanism adopted to trace all the missing children during each of the last three years and the current year, State/UT-wise;

(c) whether the Government is running any special campaign for the immediate rescue of such missing children and if so, the details thereof; and

(d) the details of directives issued by the Supreme Court in this regard along with other measures taken to check such cases and bust the network of child rackets in consultation with the States?

MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF HOME AFFAIRS
(SHRI HARIBHAI PARATHIBHAI CHAUDHARY)

(a) to (d): A Statement is laid on the Table of the House.

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STATEMENT IN REPLY TO PARTS (a) TO (d) OF LOK SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO.*6 FOR 21.07.2015
(a): Yes Madam,
(b): As per information provided by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the State/UT wise and gender wise details of total number of missing children traced-untraced in the states/UTs year-wise are given in Annexure – I. State/UTs wise cases reported, chargesheeted, convicted and persons arrested, charge-sheeted and convicted under kidnapping and abduction categories are given at Annexure – II.
(c): As per the Constitution of India, ‘Police’ and ‘Public Order’ are State subjects, hence the registration, investigation and prosecution of crimes including tracing the missing children is primarily the responsibility of the State Governments/UT Administrations. The Ministry of Home Affairs augments the efforts of States /UTs through advisories, schemes, etc. The Government has taken several initiatives to trace, rescue, and rehabilitate missing children and to reunite them with their families as indicated below;
(i) The Ministry of Home Affairs has sanctioned a Comprehensive Scheme for strengthening law enforcement response in India against Trafficking in Persons through Training and Capacity Building, wherein 225 Anti Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) have been set up throughout the country.

(ii) The Ministry of Home Affairs has also issued several advisories to the States/UTs to strengthen the efforts on tracing missing children. The advisories are available in the Ministry of Home Affairs website. http://mha.nic.in/sites/upload_files/mha/files/pdf/AdvCrime-children-280710.pdf
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L.S.S.Q.NO.*6 FOR 21.07.2015
(iii) The Ministry of Women and Child Development has initiated a web portal named ‘Track Child’ which is aimed at maintaining real time data of all missing children containing extensive identification details to
facilitate matching of missing and recovered children.

(iv) The Ministry of Home Affairs had advised the States/UTs to take up a special campaign named operation ‘SMILE’ to trace and rescue missing children and reunite them with their families during January, 2015. During this operation 3,788 children were rescued by 11 States/UTs i.e. Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Uttrakhand, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Chandigarh, Tripura, Telangana.

(v) The Government of India has requested all the States/UTs to take up another campaign called operation ‘Muskan’ during 1st July to 31st July, 2015 in order to rescue the missing children.

(d): The Hon’ble Supreme Court while adjudicating in Writ Petition (Civil) 75 of 2012, Bachpan Bachao Andolan vs. UoI has passed several directives on missing children like mandatory registration of
FIR, initial presumption of abduction of trafficking etc.
In pursuance of the Hon’ble Supreme Court’s order, the Ministry of Home Affairs had circulated an advisory dated 25th June, 2013 to all the States/UTs to comply with the orders of the Hon’ble Supreme Court. The advisory is available at the link.
http://mha.nic.in/sites/upload_files/mha/files/CSAdviMissingChild-170713.pdf
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