One of 2 missing kids lost forever, trafficking on rise

'More girls have vanished than boys — a worrying indication that child traffickers are getting smarter.' The home ministry’s report shows that chances of a missing boy being found are brighter than that of a girl. Chetan Chauhan reports. A worrying trend

Updated on: Sep 3, 2013, 10:43:44 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

When a group of children visiting a temple in northeast Delhi on Monday afternoon complained of a foul smell, locals opened the desert cooler installed in the premises and found a body.

The body was that of seven-year-old Sahil, a Class 1 student who had gone missing on Saturday afternoon while playing outside his home in Ganga Vihar.

Immediately after a missing complaint was lodged, police swung into action. Posters were put up and announcements made through public address system, but it was too late.

Just a day before Sahil vanished, the government had told Parliament that more and more missing children were going untraced in India. Simply put, now more children are lost forever than they were a few years ago.

Data from 24 states shows that 15,130 children have gone missing this year so far and only 6,269 have been found.

West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra— which have larger populations and higher cases of missing children — did not send in data, a reason why the numbers are lower when compared to previous years.

In 2012, 65,038 children were reported missing and 41.35% of them were not traced.

Not all missing children are reported to the police, so the figure could be higher.

More girls have vanished than boys — a worrying indication that child traffickers are getting smarter. It shows that child traffickers were working shrewdly and were a step ahead of the police, said Kailash Satyarthi, founder of the Delhi-based civil society group Bachpan Bachao Andolan (campaign for saving childhood).

Almost half of children reported missing this year till July have not been found, government data shows. Three years ago, almost one in every three missing children were untraced.

A closer look into the home ministry’s report also shows that chances of a missing boy being found are brighter than that of a girl. Increasingly, young girls are being pushed in to prostitution. They are also being used to meet a growing demand for domestic helps and add to it societal bias - there is very little going for missing girls.

“In one district of Assam alone we received complaint of over 150 missing girls. Our analysis show that there is an increase in demand for young girls,” Satyarthi said.

Till July 2013, around 63% girls could not be traced - a percentage far higher than the number of girls among the total missing children. Over the last three years, there has been a steady rise in this trend.

The increasing number of untraced cases also shows that finding these children is not a priority. Of 2,887 children reported missing in Delhi this year, only 832 have been found. In Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, untraced children far outnumber those reunited with their families.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Catch every big hit, every wicket with Crickit, a one stop destination for Live Scores, Match Stats, Infographics & much more. Explore now!

Stay updated with all top Cities including, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and more across India. Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News along with Delhi Election 2025 and Delhi Election Result 2025 Live, New Delhi Election Result Live, Kalkaji Election Result Live at Hindustan Times.