India’s ability to trace its missing children has sharply declined over the last five years – a fact that drew a sharp reaction from the Supreme Court of India last week.
On October 16, the Supreme Court took India’s state governments to task for their laxity in tracing the 100,000 or so children who go missing every year. The apex court acted upon a public interest litigation filed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi’s organisation, Bachpan Bachao Andolan. Announcing that it will periodically summon administrators of states from where large numbers of children go missing, the court ordered the chief secretaries and director generals of police of Bihar and Chhattisgarh to appear before it on October 30.
A child goes missing in India every eight minutes, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau, Forty per cent of these children are never found. Yet the authorities seem to be getting worse at re-uniting them with their families.
In 2009, almost 68,000 children were reported missing, of whom more than 50,000 were found. Yet in 2012, only one-third of 65,000 missing children were traced.
The ratio of untraced children to the total number of missing children has more than doubled, from 26.6% in 2009 to 58.6% in 2013.
Some of these missing children have run away to escape trying circumstances at home. But many are have been abducted by child traffickers. Tracing these children would involve quick action by the authorities. “If nothing happens in the first 72 hours then the chance of finding the kid again is much slimmer," said Shireen Miller, the director of Advocacy at Save The Children India. "There are only a few states with proactive [police] forces in the country.”
After a protracted demand for a strong law against human trafficking, Section 370 of the Indian Penal Code was reworked last year to mandate seven years imprisonment for people involved in trafficking. Crucially, the law criminalises the employment of trafficked people.
"The amendment was long overdue,” said Rakesh Singhal, project director of the victim assistance campaign at Bachpan Bachao Andolan. “But enforcement in different states remains patchy.”
Between 2008-'12, the authorities registered 452,679 cases of child trafficking, but only 25,006 reached the prosecution state. Of these, only 3,390 convictions were obtained. "Our conviction rate is abysmal," said Bhuwan Ribhu, the advocate who is leading Bachpan Bachao Andolan’s public interest litigation. "More efforts are required, with specialised training of the prosecutors, investigators and child rescue workers to fast-track these cases. These should not be lost behind in the rigmarole of the Indian courts.”
While some states have impressive success rates in convicting child abductors, others have failed to convict even a single offender. In 2012, for instance, Manipur reported 233 cases of missing children and Meghalaya 92. Yet no one was convicted in those cases.
Some states report extremely low numbers of missing children ‒ or, as in the case of Jharkhand, none at all, even though NGOs like Bachpan Bachao Andolan assert there hundreds of children go missing in the state every month. However, according to data provided to the Rajya Sabha by Krishna Tirath, the former minister for Women and Child Development, Jharkhand reported no cases of missing children between 2009 and 2011.
“The states aren’t even willing to provide the data,” said Singhal. “The worst affected states do this to escape investigation. Government records are messed up. We have rescued children from Jharkhand and other areas in such conditions that they could only have been the victims of trafficking. But these go unreported. Even if the state police files the reports, the central government never receives the data.”
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On October 16, the Supreme Court took India’s state governments to task for their laxity in tracing the 100,000 or so children who go missing every year. The apex court acted upon a public interest litigation filed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi’s organisation, Bachpan Bachao Andolan. Announcing that it will periodically summon administrators of states from where large numbers of children go missing, the court ordered the chief secretaries and director generals of police of Bihar and Chhattisgarh to appear before it on October 30.
A child goes missing in India every eight minutes, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau, Forty per cent of these children are never found. Yet the authorities seem to be getting worse at re-uniting them with their families.
In 2009, almost 68,000 children were reported missing, of whom more than 50,000 were found. Yet in 2012, only one-third of 65,000 missing children were traced.
The ratio of untraced children to the total number of missing children has more than doubled, from 26.6% in 2009 to 58.6% in 2013.
Some of these missing children have run away to escape trying circumstances at home. But many are have been abducted by child traffickers. Tracing these children would involve quick action by the authorities. “If nothing happens in the first 72 hours then the chance of finding the kid again is much slimmer," said Shireen Miller, the director of Advocacy at Save The Children India. "There are only a few states with proactive [police] forces in the country.”
After a protracted demand for a strong law against human trafficking, Section 370 of the Indian Penal Code was reworked last year to mandate seven years imprisonment for people involved in trafficking. Crucially, the law criminalises the employment of trafficked people.
"The amendment was long overdue,” said Rakesh Singhal, project director of the victim assistance campaign at Bachpan Bachao Andolan. “But enforcement in different states remains patchy.”
Between 2008-'12, the authorities registered 452,679 cases of child trafficking, but only 25,006 reached the prosecution state. Of these, only 3,390 convictions were obtained. "Our conviction rate is abysmal," said Bhuwan Ribhu, the advocate who is leading Bachpan Bachao Andolan’s public interest litigation. "More efforts are required, with specialised training of the prosecutors, investigators and child rescue workers to fast-track these cases. These should not be lost behind in the rigmarole of the Indian courts.”
While some states have impressive success rates in convicting child abductors, others have failed to convict even a single offender. In 2012, for instance, Manipur reported 233 cases of missing children and Meghalaya 92. Yet no one was convicted in those cases.
Some states report extremely low numbers of missing children ‒ or, as in the case of Jharkhand, none at all, even though NGOs like Bachpan Bachao Andolan assert there hundreds of children go missing in the state every month. However, according to data provided to the Rajya Sabha by Krishna Tirath, the former minister for Women and Child Development, Jharkhand reported no cases of missing children between 2009 and 2011.
“The states aren’t even willing to provide the data,” said Singhal. “The worst affected states do this to escape investigation. Government records are messed up. We have rescued children from Jharkhand and other areas in such conditions that they could only have been the victims of trafficking. But these go unreported. Even if the state police files the reports, the central government never receives the data.”
