Never-ending search for their missing children

Meena, 32, ever allows her son to go to school alone. There's a good enough reason behind her obsessive behaviour: Meena's elder son had gone missing in March 2011 and she is now scared that she might end up losing her second son as well. Faizan Haider reports.

Meena, 32, ever allows her son to go to school alone. There's a good enough reason behind her obsessive behaviour: Meena's elder son had gone missing in March 2011 and she is now scared that she might end up losing her second son as well.

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Kunwar Pal has another heart-rending story to narrate. After his 12-year-old son went missing in November 2010, Pal sold off his Sangam Vihar house to search for him. So far, he has travelled to Kanpur, Sonepat and several other cities and pasted his posters everywhere.

These days, families in border areas of Delhi are living in constant fear of losing their children as the number of missing kids here is much higher than the rest of the city. In Sangam Vihar alone, at least 40 children have never returned home.

"It has been four years, but I haven't lost hope. On May 15, 2008, my son had taken permission to go outside to play with his friends but he never returned. I haven't stopped going to the police station since then," said Sheila Devi, another parent from Sangam Vihar.

Darshani Devi has visited five states and over a dozen cities. She has contacted several NGOs for any clue of her grandson, who went missing in March 2011 from outside her house in east Delhi's Gokulpuri. Vaibhav, 16, had been kidnapped two times earlier, but was traced by the police each time to the same man, who had forced him into child labour.

This time, the police have refused to help her and so she has started looking for him on her own. "Whenever I hear news of any rescue operation, I rush there to check if my grandson is one of them," she said.

There are several families, who have been running around, to trace their child. "Someone told me that my son could be in Meerut and I immediately rushed there. I take every tip-off seriously and leave my work. After my wife died, it was my responsibility to look after him, but I failed," said Pal.