Question : Missing Children

(a) whether cases of missing children have increased in the country;

(b) if so, whether the Government has identified the reasons behind such increase;

(c) if so, the details thereof and the number of such cases registered, rackets/ gang busted, accused arrested, convicted, children traced/untraced, conviction rate achieved and the steps taken to trace all the missing children along with the action taken against the guilty, separately during each of the last three years and the current year, gender and State/UT-wise;

(d) whether the National Human Rights Commission has formulated any action plan to investigate and trace the missing children in the country and if so, the details thereof;

(e) whether the Government has developed a website to track missing
children in the country and if so, the details thereof; and

(f) the details of the advisories issued by the Government to the States in this regard along with the other corrective steps taken by the Government to prevent such cases in future?

MINISTER OF STATE IN THE MINISTRY OF HOME AFFAIRS
(SHRI HARIBHAI PARATHIBHAI CHAUDHARY)
(a) to (c): As per information provided by the National Crime Records
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Bureau (NCRB), a total of 79508, 69660 and 48847 cases were registered in the country during the year 2013, 2014 and 2015 respectively. Data for the year 2015 is provisional.

The various reasons for missing of children include trafficking, running away from family, kidnapping, abduction etc. NCRB maintains data of Missing/ Traced/ Untraced Persons gender-wise and age-group wise. The data is being received from the State Crime Records Bureau of States/UTs. The available information on Children Missing/Traced/Untraced during 2013-2015 is enclosed at Annexure-I. The cases reported, charge-sheeted, convicted, conviction rate, Persons arrested, Persons charge-sheeted and convicted under Kidnapping & Abduction (Total) for Children are enclosed at Annexure-II. Data on rackets/gang busted is not maintained by NCRB.
(d): The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) had constituted a Committee on 12th February, 2007 to examine the issue of Missing Children in depth from the point of view of evolving practical guidelines that would facilitate tracing and restoring missing children back to their families or to agencies/support systems where they could be taken care of and protected.
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(e): The Ministry of Women & Child Development has set up web portals ‘TrackChild’ and ‘Khoya-Paya’ under its centrally sponsored Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) to track the missing and found children.
The TrackChild portal provides facility for searching missing children and matching of missing children with the recovered/found children could also be done based on pre-defined parameters such as name, age, parents details date of missing etc.
The Ministry of Women & Child Development launched Khoya-Paya on 2nd June 2015. Khoya-Paya is an enabling platform, where citizens can report missing children as well as sighting of their whereabouts without loosing much time.

(f): The Ministry of Home Affairs has issued two major advisories regarding the missing children and seven advisories related to trafficking in persons during the last five years which are available in the website of the Ministry of Home Affairs at www.mha.nic.in as well as the website http://stophumantrafficking-mha.nic.in/.


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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, wherein225 Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) have been set up throughout the country.
The Ministry of Home Affairs advised all States/UTs to launch a sustained campaign titled ‘Operation Smile’ throughout the country for a month in January, 2015 to rescue the missing children and reunite them with their families. Appreciating the remarkable achievement made by the field officers, MHA rolled out another dedicated campaign titled ‘Operation Muskaan’ throughout the country from 1st July, 2015 to 31st July, 2015 to trace the missing children. More than 28000 children were rescued during these campaigns. States/UTs have again been advised to roll out another sustained campaign titled Operation Smile-II in the month of January, 2016.
As per the seventh schedule to the Constitution of India `Police` and `Public Order` are State subjects and, as such, the primary responsibility of prevention, detection, registration, investigation and prosecution of crime, lies with the State Governments/ Union Territory Administrations.
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