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 REFERRED TO IN LOK SABHA STARRED QUESTION NO. †*121 FOR 08.12.2015
(a): Yes Madam. As per information provided by the National Crime Records Bureau(NCRB), the number of women and children missing/traced/untraced during the last three years and current year State-wise is given at Annexure I & II respectively.
(b): The Supreme Court while adjudicating in Writ Petition (Civil) 75 of 2012, Bachpan Bachao Andolan vs. UoI recently on 6th November 2015 advised for reconciliation of missing persons data maintained by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and early finalization of the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for tracing out missing children. NCRB has since then reconciled the data received from the State Crime Record Bureaus (SCRB). The Ministry of Women and Child Development has prepared a draft SOP and has initiated the process of consultation with key stakeholders.
Delhi High Court in the W.P.(CRL) 869/1998 dated 20.11.2015 in their order advised the Delhi Government to place on record a comprehensive affidavit within three weeks time giving full data with regard to the missing and recovered children during the last 4 years and also to indicate whether any software is being used by the Delhi Police to identify and match photographs of the missing children with the children in Children Homes all over the country. Government of India is of the view that the ‘TrackChild’ software should have the capability of matching photographs of the missing children with children in the shelter homes all over the country which will speed up identification of such missing children. The Ministry of Women & Child Development has already advised the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to incorporate such functionality in ‘TrackChild’.
(c): The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has issued two major advisories regarding the missing children and seven advisories related to trafficking in persons including women 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/. In addition, a comprehensive advisory on crimes against women has also been issued on 12th May 2015.
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L.S.S.Q.NO.*121 FOR 08.12.2015
(d): As per the Seventh Schedule to the Constitution of India, “Police” and “Public Order” are State subjects and, as such the primary responsibility for prevention, detection, registration, investigation and prosecution of crime lies with the States/UT Administrations. However, the Government of India attaches highest priority to the issue of missing women and children and has taken the following key measures;
(i) The Criminal Law (Amendment) Act 2013 has been enacted which has comprehensively defined the offence of Human Trafficking and also enhanced punishment for such crime.
(ii) A comprehensive scheme for strengthening the enforcement of Law against trafficking in persons has been sanctioned since 2010-2011 by the Ministry of Home Affairs wherein 225 Anti Human Trafficking Units (AHTU) have been setup throughout the country.
(iii) MHA has approved setting up 150 specialized Investigative Units on crimes against women (IUCAW) in States/UTs with 50:50 fund sharing.
(iv) The Ministry of Women and Child Development has developed a national portal called ‘TrackChild’ to track missing and found children.
(v) The Ministry of Home Affairs advised the States and UTs to take up a month long campaign titled ‘Operation Smile’ in January 2015 and ‘Operation Muskan’ in July 2015 leading to rescue of 9,146 and 19,742 missing children respectively.
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