45,000 children go missing every year

As per NHRC figures, a staggering 45,000 children go missing in India every year, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 4, 2007, 02:24:00 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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As many as 38 children — skeletal remains of many of whom have allegedly been found over the past few days — are said to have disappeared over two years in Noida’s Nithari village. But the number is merely symptomatic of a widely prevalent situation.

A staggering 45,000 children — one every 4,200-odd households — go missing in India every year, according to figures compiled by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). NGOs working in the field estimate only 10 per cent of all cases are registered with the police, so the actual numbers could be several times higher. Kiran Bedi, director general, Bureau of Police Research and Development, conceded that the "numbers of missing children reported on child helplines were much more than the figures in police records."

According to NHRC’s report, first published in 2004, most children are reported missing from the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa where, it says, the "trafficking of children has become a highly profitable business". Traffickers target low-income families, and their tactics range from drugging and abduction to persuasion and deception, the report says.

PM Nair of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), who worked on the NHRC study, says most missing children remain untraced because the police do not try, and their stories are not taken up in the media.

Kailash Satharay of the NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan said most missing children came from Dalit, tribal and poor Muslim families, who do not have the means or visibility to pressure the police or galvanise the media.

According to the report, cases of child abuse or paedophilia come low down on the police’s list of priorities. Eighty per cent of policemen did not feel tracing a missing child was a priority; 54 per cent thought it was not even worth the effort, the study showed.

Bedi explained that Indian policemen are taught to investigate only cognizable offences because they show up in annual crime figures. In most cases — like in Noida — all that the police do is make a daily diary entry, and issue the complainant a non-cognizable report, telling them a "case" has been registered.

"It is called burking in police slang," Bedi said.

There is, however, a ray of hope. In Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, governments have recently issued diktats telling the police to investigate each case of missing children. And Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury says, "We will bring changes in the law to end the story of the missing child. We have sought changes in the curriculum at the National Police Academy and police training schools."

Email Chetan Chauhan: cchauhan @hindustantimes.com

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

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