Missing children remain a concern

Alappuzha: Many children vanish without a trace from different parts of the state. According to 'Track Child 2.0, a police-initiated website, 3, 365 cases of missing children were registered with the portel, out of which only 2,626 children were recovered and 739 remain untraced. 

In the last 365 days alone, 511 children went missing in the state while 644 were traced. In the last 30 days, 47 cases were registered.

Concerned with the increasing number of missing children, the social justice department had launched a district-based ‘Operation Vatsalya’ in association with the Child Protection Unit, Child Welfare Committee and Childline. This was meant to track the missing children and help them rejoin their parents.

But this did not have the desired impact. According to the police officials, the operations (Vatsalya and Smile) were launched by the social justice department and the ministry of home affairs for two months in 2015. But the number of untraced children is increasing due to the absence of periodical operations, the police say.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had said in the Assembly on February 7 that there were no reports of any mafia kidnapping children in the state.

According to child rights activists, neither Operation Smile nor Vatsalya is active in the state now. The Operation Smile team was set up under the deputy superintendent of police, Crime Records Bureau, in every district, but it lacks accuracy, they say.